Crontab Every Hour During Business Hours (0 9-17 * * 1-5)
Run a cron job every hour from 9 AM to 5 PM on weekdays. Combines hour and day-of-week ranges for business-hours scheduling.
Detailed Explanation
Running a Cron Job During Business Hours
The expression 0 9-17 * * 1-5 runs at the top of every hour from 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday. It combines two range operators to create a business-hours schedule.
Field Breakdown
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0 | At minute 0 |
| Hour | 9-17 | From 9 AM to 5 PM |
| Day of Month | * | Any day |
| Month | * | Every month |
| Day of Week | 1-5 | Monday through Friday |
Execution Schedule
This runs 9 times per weekday (at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00, 16:00, and 17:00) and 45 times per week.
Variations
# Every 15 minutes during business hours
*/15 9-17 * * 1-5
# Every 30 minutes during extended hours (8 AM - 8 PM)
*/30 8-20 * * 1-5
# Twice during business hours (9 AM and 1 PM)
0 9,13 * * 1-5
# Every 5 minutes during core hours (10 AM - 4 PM)
*/5 10-16 * * 1-5
Range Operator Details
The hyphen creates an inclusive range. 9-17 includes both endpoints, so it means hours 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Similarly, 1-5 includes Monday (1) through Friday (5).
Use Case
Business-hours scheduling is essential for monitoring production systems during office hours, sending hourly status updates to team channels, running data processing jobs when the team is available to respond to issues, and customer-facing health checks.