Cron Three Times Daily on Weekdays

The cron expression 0 8,13,18 * * 1-5 schedules a task to run three times per weekday, at 8:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday.

Field-by-field breakdown:

• 0 (Minute): At minute 0. The task fires at the top of each qualifying hour.
• 8,13,18 (Hour): At hours 8 (8 AM), 13 (1 PM), and 18 (6 PM). The list notation specifies three trigger points that divide the business day into roughly equal 5-hour segments.
• * (Day of Month): Every day from 1 through 31. No restriction on the day of the month.
• * (Month): Every month from January through December. No restriction on which month.
• 1-5 (Day of Week): Monday through Friday. The range covers all five business days.

This means your task will execute 15 times per week: three times per day on each of five weekdays. The three time slots divide the business day into morning (8 AM), post-lunch (1 PM), and end-of-day (6 PM) segments. This cadence provides regular updates throughout the workday without the overhead of hourly execution. The 8 AM slot captures overnight changes, the 1 PM slot provides a midday refresh, and the 6 PM slot generates end-of-day summaries. This tri-daily pattern is popular for dashboard refreshes, inventory syncs, and report generation. This expression is supported by standard cron on Linux/macOS, as well as cloud services like AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud Scheduler, and GitHub Actions.