Cron Job Every Day at 2 AM

Cron expression for every day at 2 AM

0 2 * * *

At 02:00. It runs once a day, 365 times a year.

02:00 is a popular slot for backups and maintenance because traffic is lowest. It is also the hour most affected by daylight saving time. In the US, clocks jump from 02:00 straight to 03:00 in spring, so 02:00 doesn’t exist that day. cronie runs the skipped job right away, while some other schedulers silently skip it.

Field by field

Examples

crontab

Run crontab -e and add:

0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/job.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1

Kubernetes CronJob

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 2 * * *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"          # Kubernetes 1.27+
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid    # skip a run if the last one is still going
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: ghcr.io/acme/job:1.0
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

GitHub Actions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 2 * * *'   # UTC

GitHub evaluates schedules in UTC, and runs can start several minutes late at busy times.

systemd timer

# /etc/systemd/system/job.timer
[Unit]
Description=Run job.service every day at 2 AM

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 02:00:00
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Enable it with systemctl enable --now job.timer, and check the next runs with systemd-analyze calendar "*-*-* 02:00:00". Persistent=true runs a missed job after downtime, which cron can’t do.

AWS EventBridge

cron(0 2 * * ? *)

EventBridge cron has six fields (the last is the year), uses ? in either the day-of-month or the day-of-week field, and numbers weekdays from 1 (Sunday) to 7. Rules run in UTC; EventBridge Scheduler also accepts a time zone.

Similar schedules: daily

• Every day at midnight: 0 0 * * *
• Every day at 1 AM: 0 1 * * *
• Every day at 3 AM: 0 3 * * *
• Every day at 6 AM: 0 6 * * *
• Every day at 8 AM: 0 8 * * *
• Every day at 9 AM: 0 9 * * *
• Every day at noon: 0 12 * * *
• Every day at 5 PM: 0 17 * * *
• Every day at 11:59 PM: 59 23 * * *
• Twice a day: 0 0,12 * * *
• Every other day: 0 0 */2 * *

Have a different schedule? Paste any expression into the Cron Expression Generator, or browse all cron examples.

Sources

• POSIX: crontab
• crontab(5) manual page
• Kubernetes docs: CronJob
• GitHub Actions docs: schedule event
• systemd.time(7): calendar events
• AWS docs: EventBridge Scheduler cron expressions

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Frequently asked questions