Cron every 6 hours

The cron expression for every 6 hours is:

0 */6 * * *

Runs four times a day: 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00.

4 times a day

Standard 5-field cron

Monitor this schedule Open in translator Change it in the generator

Next 10 runs

For 0 */6 * * *, 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 30, 2026, 00:00	Friday
2	Oct 30, 2026, 06:00	Friday
3	Oct 30, 2026, 12:00	Friday
4	Oct 30, 2026, 18:00	Friday
5	Oct 31, 2026, 00:00	Saturday
6	Oct 31, 2026, 06:00	Saturday
7	Oct 31, 2026, 12:00	Saturday
8	Oct 31, 2026, 18:00	Saturday
9	Nov 1, 2026, 00:00	Sunday
10	Nov 1, 2026, 06:00	Sunday

How to read 0 /6 * *

0 in the minute field pins the job to minute 0. */6 in the hour field takes every sixth hour, starting at midnight. It is the same as 0 0,6,12,18 * * *.

Field	Value	Meaning	Allowed
Minute	0	At the top of the hour	0-59
Hour	*/6	Every 6 hours, from hour 0	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

Leaving the minute as * (* */6 * * *) runs the job every minute of those hours.
The hours are in the server's timezone. On a server set to UTC, 06:00 is 01:00 or 02:00 in New York, depending on daylight saving time.

Often used for: Database backups, exports and syncs that run a few times a day.

Use it in

crontab

0 */6 * * * /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: "0 */6 * * *"
  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: '0 */6 * * *'
      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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