Cronjob.de › Crontab reference › Weekdays
Cronjob on weekdays only, Monday to Friday
For "weekdays at 8 am" the expression is 0 8 * * 1-5. The last field is the day of the week, and 1-5 means Monday to Friday.
Meaning
What the expression says exactly
The days of the week are numbered: 1 is Monday, 5 is Friday, 6 is Saturday. Sunday has two numbers, 0 and 7, both are allowed. Instead of numbers many schedulers also accept names such as MON-FRI.
The first two fields set the time, here 8:00. Day of month and month stay *. The job therefore runs five times a week.
The next runs
- Mon, 2 Nov 2026, 08:00
- Tue, 3 Nov 2026, 08:00
- Wed, 4 Nov 2026, 08:00
- Thu, 5 Nov 2026, 08:00
- Fri, 6 Nov 2026, 08:00
Calculated in German time when this page was loaded.
Variants
Similar schedules
*/15 8-18 * * 1-5 |
Every 15 minutes during office hours, Monday to Friday. | Adjust |
0 8 * * 1 |
Mondays only at 8 am, for example for a weekly report. | Adjust |
0 17 * * 5 |
Fridays at 5 pm, to close the week. | Adjust |
0 10 * * 6,0 |
The opposite: weekends only, Saturday and Sunday at 10 am. | Adjust |
0 8 * * 1,3,5 |
Monday, Wednesday and Friday. | Adjust |
Watch out for
Typical mistakes with this interval
Cron knows no public holidays
To cron, weekdays means Monday to Friday, even on Whit Monday or 24 December. If nothing should happen on holidays, the script itself has to check whether today is one and stop right away.
Day of month and day of week together
Unix has a special rule: if both fields hold values, it is enough for one of them to match. 0 8 1 * 1 runs there on the 1st of every month AND on every Monday, not only on the 1st when it is a Monday. At Cronjob.de it is the other way round: both have to match. Anyone copying a schedule from a crontab should know this.
Start of the week in other tools
In some programming languages the week starts differently or counts from 1 for Sunday. In the crontab it is always: 0 or 7 Sunday, 1 Monday.
Own server
How it looks in the crontab
Open with crontab -e and add one line. The first starts a PHP script directly, the second calls an address. Replace paths and address with your own.
0 8 * * 1-5 /usr/bin/php /pfad/zu/skript.php >/dev/null 2>&1
0 8 * * MON-FRI curl -fsS https://ihre-domain.de/cron.php >/dev/null
Without your own server
How it works at Cronjob.de
No command-line access needed: you enter the address of your script and click the schedule together. You can also type the expression above directly, or describe the interval in one sentence and have it suggested. Cronjob.de uses German time.
Five cronjobs are free forever, on the five-minute grid. One-minute intervals start with Plus. How to prepare a script on shared web space for this is explained in the web space guide.
FAQ
Common questions
- Is Sunday 0 or 7?
- Both. The crontab allows both 0 and 7 for Sunday, so that ranges like
5-7for Friday to Sunday work. - How do I run a job on the first Monday of the month?
- On Unix the expression alone cannot do it, because day and weekday are combined with OR there. You use
0 8 * * 1and check in the script whether the day is the 7th or earlier. At Cronjob.de0 8 1-7 * 1is enough, because both fields have to match there. - Which time does "8 am" refer to?
- The time zone of the machine. At Cronjob.de that is German time with daylight saving time.
Create your cronjob now
Create an account, enter the address, click the schedule. Five cronjobs are free forever, the first 14 days run on the Unlimited plan.
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