Cron HelperCron expression for every hour during business hours
Every hour, on the hour, between 09:00 and 17:00, on weekdays (Monday to Friday).
Five fields for Linux, GitHub Actions and Kubernetes (minute hour day month weekday). Six or seven for Quartz. Nothing you type leaves your device.
What it means and when to use it
A range such as 9-17 in the hour field lists every hour from 9 to 17 inclusive. With minute 0 that is nine runs a day: 9:00, 10:00 and so on up to 17:00. Add 1-5 for the working days. This is the standard way to say "every hour during the working day" for status emails, ticket checks, or a polling job that is pointless at night.
Watch out for this
If you change minute 0 to */15, the range 9-17 still includes the whole of hour 17, so you get runs at 17:15, 17:30 and 17:45 as well. The hour range limits the hour of the day, not the final minute. To end exactly at 17:00 you need two lines (see the page on every 15 minutes). The range also contains no time zone: 9-17 means the server's clock.
What each field says
| Field | Written | Means |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0 | 0 |
| Hour | 9-17 | 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 (9 values) |
| Day of month | * | every day of the month |
| Month | * | every month |
| Day of week | 1-5 | Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri |
An example of the next runs
If it were Friday 13 November 2026 at 10:20 UTC, the next six runs would be these. Times are shown in UTC and in India time (UTC+5:30).
| UTC | India time |
|---|---|
| Fri 13 Nov, 11:00 | Fri 13 Nov, 16:30 |
| Fri 13 Nov, 12:00 | Fri 13 Nov, 17:30 |
| Fri 13 Nov, 13:00 | Fri 13 Nov, 18:30 |
| Fri 13 Nov, 14:00 | Fri 13 Nov, 19:30 |
| Fri 13 Nov, 15:00 | Fri 13 Nov, 20:30 |
| Fri 13 Nov, 16:00 | Fri 13 Nov, 21:30 |
The same schedule in other places
Quartz
Quartz has a seconds field in front, uses ? in one day field, and counts Sunday as 1:
0 0 9-17 ? * 2-6GitHub Actions
Scheduled workflows run in UTC unless you add a time zone. In the workflow file:
on:
schedule:
- cron: '0 9-17 * * 1-5'Kubernetes CronJob
In a CronJob manifest the schedule goes in spec.schedule. Without spec.timeZone, it is read in the time zone of the cluster's controller:
spec:
schedule: "0 9-17 * * 1-5"
timeZone: "Etc/UTC"A crontab line to copy
The command is made up. Replace it with your own and use full paths:
0 9-17 * * 1-5 /home/me/bin/ticket-check.sh >> /home/me/tickets.log 2>&1Questions
Is the range inclusive?
Yes, the manual says the specified range is inclusive: 8-11 means hours 8, 9, 10 and 11.
This is an independent guide and tool. It is not connected with crontab.guru, Quartz, GitHub, Kubernetes, Spring or the Linux projects named here. Product names belong to their owners.