Cron expression: every hour

Open in the Cron Expression Generator →

What 0 * * * * means

Cron reads five fields from left to right: minute, hour, day of the month, month and day of the week. For every hour they are:

Next runs

Calculated in your browser for your time zone. On a server, cron uses the server’s time zone (often UTC).

1. Enable JavaScript to see the next run times.

Typical uses

• Hourly reports and digests
• Log rotation
• Pulling analytics

Good to know

Runs at minute 0 of every hour. Many jobs start at :00, so pick another minute (for example 17 * * * *) to avoid load spikes. @hourly is the same schedule.

Use it in crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and Node.js

crontab (crontab -e):

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

GitHub Actions (times are UTC):

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 * * * *'

Kubernetes CronJob:

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 * * * *"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: my-job
              image: alpine:3
              command: ["sh", "-c", "echo running"]

Node.js (node-cron):

import cron from 'node-cron';
cron.schedule('0 * * * *', () => {
  // your job
});

Related schedules

• Every 2 hours — 0 */2 * * *
• Every 3 hours — 0 */3 * * *
• Every 4 hours — 0 */4 * * *
• Every 6 hours — 0 */6 * * *
• Every 12 hours — 0 */12 * * *