Cron Expression for Every Hour During Business Hours

0 9-17 * * 1-5

Every hour, between 09:00 AM and 05:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Hourly updates to dashboards or chat channels on weekdays.

Field-by-field breakdown

Field	Value	Allowed range	Meaning
Minute	0	0–59	at minute 0
Hour	9-17	0–23	9 through 17
Day of month	*	1–31	every day of the month
Month	*	1–12	every month
Day of week	1-5	0–6 (Sunday = 0)	Monday through Friday

Next 5 runs (your time zone)

Calculating upcoming runs…

Cron uses the time zone of the machine or scheduler that runs it, which is often UTC on servers.

How to use this schedule

crontab

0 9-17 * * 1-5 /path/to/script.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1

Kubernetes CronJob

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 9-17 * * 1-5"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
            - name: my-job
              image: busybox
              command: ["sh", "-c", "echo running"]
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

GitHub Actions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 9-17 * * 1-5'  # UTC

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cron expression for every hour during business hours?

Use "0 9-17 * * 1-5". In plain English: Every hour, between 09:00 AM and 05:00 PM, Monday through Friday.

What does "0 9-17 * * 1-5" mean?

Minute: at minute 0; Hour: 9 through 17; Day of month: every day of the month; Month: every month; Day of week: Monday through Friday.