Cron every 20 minutes

The cron expression for every 20 minutes is:

*/20 * * * *

Runs three times an hour: :00, :20 and :40.

72 times a day

Standard 5-field cron

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Next 10 runs

For */20 * * * *, in the timezone you pick. Cron uses the server's timezone.

Times in UTC as of the last site update. They refresh when the page loads in a browser.

Timezone

#	Date and time	When
1	Oct 29, 2026, 22:20	Thursday
2	Oct 29, 2026, 22:40	Thursday
3	Oct 29, 2026, 23:00	Thursday
4	Oct 29, 2026, 23:20	Thursday
5	Oct 29, 2026, 23:40	Thursday
6	Oct 30, 2026, 00:00	Friday
7	Oct 30, 2026, 00:20	Friday
8	Oct 30, 2026, 00:40	Friday
9	Oct 30, 2026, 01:00	Friday
10	Oct 30, 2026, 01:20	Friday

How to read /20 * * *

*/20 in the minute field takes every twentieth minute, starting at 0. It is the same as 0,20,40 * * * *.

Field	Value	Meaning	Allowed
Minute	*/20	Every 20 minutes, from minute 0	0-59
Hour	*	Every hour	0-23
Day of month	*	Every day of the month	1-31
Month	*	Every month	1-12 or jan-dec
Weekday	*	Every day of week	0-7 or sun-sat

Watch out for

20 * * * * (without the */) is a different schedule: once an hour, at 20 minutes past.

Often used for: Syncs and checks that run a few times an hour.

Use it in

crontab

*/20 * * * * /path/to/your-script.sh

Edit with crontab -e. Runs in the server's timezone.

Kubernetes CronJob

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-job
spec:
  schedule: "*/20 * * * *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: my-job
              image: busybox:1.36
              command: ["sh", "-c", "date"]

Without timeZone, the schedule follows the timezone of the kube-controller-manager.

GitHub Actions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '*/20 * * * *'
      timezone: "Etc/UTC"
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: ./your-script.sh

Without timezone, GitHub runs schedules in UTC. It runs them at most every 5 minutes, and a run can start late when GitHub is busy.

All cron schedules

Cron does not tell you when a job stops

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