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Cron schedule

Cron every day at noon

The cron expression for every day at noon is 0 12 * * *: minute 0 of hour 12, every day. cron uses a 24-hour clock, so 12 is noon and 0 is midnight.

Every day at noon
Expression0 12 * * *
Runs365 times in 2027
systemd OnCalendar*-*-* 12:00:00

How it works

Hours in cron run 0 to 23 with no AM/PM, so noon is simply 12. There’s no macro for it; @daily is midnight.

Noon is a popular slot for things people read over lunch: digests, stand-up summaries, stock or price snapshots. It’s also a quiet time for batch jobs in many systems because it avoids the midnight rush.

If the scheduler runs in UTC, noon UTC is 09:00 in São Paulo, 13:00 or 14:00 in Central Europe and 07:00 or 08:00 in New York. The next-runs table below shows the conversion for your own zone.

Field-by-field breakdown
FieldValueMeaning
Minute0minute 0 (on the hour)
Hour12hour 12 (12 PM)
Day of month*every day of the month
Month*every month
Day of week*every day of the week

Next runs

Scheduler clock

As on GitHub Actions without timezone, Vercel, Cloudflare and Kubernetes with timeZone "Etc/UTC".

Next run times, computed in your browser from the current time
RunYour timeUTC
1Calculating… 
2  
3  
4  
5  

Ready-to-paste versions

The same schedule for each scheduler, with what differs on each one.

crontab (Linux, macOS, BSD)

crontab -e
# m h dom mon dow  command
0 12 * * * /usr/local/bin/job.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1
  • cron uses the server’s time zone. On cronie (Fedora, RHEL), a CRON_TZ=Europe/London line above the entry changes the zone for the entries below it.

GitHub Actions

.github/workflows/scheduled.yml
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 12 * * *'
      # timezone: 'America/New_York'  # optional; UTC when omitted
  workflow_dispatch: {}
  • Runs in UTC unless you set timezone, and only on the default branch. GitHub’s docs warn that scheduled runs can be delayed at busy times and that schedules in public repositories are disabled after 60 days without activity.
  • The start of every hour is GitHub’s busiest slot. If the exact minute doesn’t matter, move the 0 to something like 17 to get picked up sooner.
  • With a timezone that observes DST, a time skipped by the spring-forward change advances to the next valid time (the docs’ example: 2:30 AM becomes 3:00 AM).

Kubernetes CronJob

cronjob.yaml
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: scheduled-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 12 * * *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: busybox:1.36
              command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "date; echo running"]
  • spec.timeZone is stable since Kubernetes 1.27; without it, the kube-controller-manager’s zone applies. concurrencyPolicy: Forbid skips a run while the previous Job is still active.

Vercel Cron Jobs

vercel.json
{
  "crons": [
    { "path": "/api/cron", "schedule": "0 12 * * *" }
  ]
}
  • Vercel always uses UTC, doesn’t accept names like MON or JAN, and won’t let you set both day of month and day of week.
  • This fits the Hobby plan, but Hobby precision is per hour: the invocation can land anywhere within the scheduled hour.

Cloudflare Workers

wrangler.toml
[triggers]
crons = ["0 12 * * *"]
  • Cron Triggers run on UTC. Changes can take up to 15 minutes to propagate across Cloudflare’s network.

node-cron (Node.js)

scheduler.js
import cron from 'node-cron';

// 6 fields: the first one (seconds) is optional
cron.schedule('0 0 12 * * *', async () => {
  await runJob();
}, { timezone: 'UTC', noOverlap: true });
  • The schedule lives inside the Node process: if it’s down, nothing runs, and three replicas run the job three times. noOverlap skips a tick while the previous run is still going.

systemd timer

job.timer + job.service
# /etc/systemd/system/job.timer
[Unit]
Description=Run job.service every day at noon

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 12:00:00
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

# /etc/systemd/system/job.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/job.sh

# systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable --now job.timer
  • Check it with systemd-analyze calendar '*-*-* 12:00:00', which prints the normalized form and the next elapse. AccuracySec defaults to 1min, so the start can drift by up to a minute.
  • Persistent=true runs the job at boot if the machine was off at the scheduled time, which plain cron doesn’t do.

Spring @Scheduled and Quartz

Java
@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 12 * * *", zone = "UTC")
public void runJob() {
    // ...
}

// Quartz CronTrigger:
CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 12 * * ?")
  • In Spring, the first of the 6 fields is seconds; the rest follow standard cron (0 or 7 = Sunday).
  • In Quartz, one of the two day fields must be ?, so the day-of-week field gets it.

Pitfalls

12 PM is 12, 12 AM is 0

On a 12-hour clock, 12 AM is midnight. Someone converting “12 AM” to cron as 0 12 * * * gets noon instead. Midnight is 0 0 * * *.

Noon UTC drifts in local time with DST

A UTC schedule doesn’t move, so in a zone with daylight saving time the local run time shifts by an hour twice a year. If “noon local” matters, set CRON_TZ, Kubernetes timeZone or GitHub’s timezone.

Weekends included

0 12 * * * runs seven days a week. For a lunchtime digest on workdays only, use 0 12 * * 1-5.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cron expression for every day at noon?
0 12 * * *, meaning minute 0 of hour 12 every day.
How do I run a cron job at 12 PM on weekdays?
0 12 * * 1-5 runs at noon Monday through Friday.
How do I run a job at 12:30 every day?
30 12 * * * runs at 12:30.
What is noon in Quartz or Spring?
Quartz: 0 0 12 * * ? (its own documentation uses this exact example). Spring: 0 0 12 * * *.

Last reviewed by Arielton Oberek.