Cron Expression for Twice a Day

0 0,12 * * *

At 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM. Running a job at midnight and noon, such as syncing data between regions.

Field-by-field breakdown

Field	Value	Allowed range	Meaning
Minute	0	0–59	at minute 0
Hour	0,12	0–23	0 and 12
Day of month	*	1–31	every day of the month
Month	*	1–12	every month
Day of week	*	0–6 (Sunday = 0)	every day of the week

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 0,12 * * * /path/to/script.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1

Kubernetes CronJob

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 0,12 * * *"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
            - name: my-job
              image: busybox
              command: ["sh", "-c", "echo running"]
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

GitHub Actions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0,12 * * *'  # UTC

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cron expression for twice a day?

Use "0 0,12 * * *". In plain English: At 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM.

What does "0 0,12 * * *" mean?

Minute: at minute 0; Hour: 0 and 12; Day of month: every day of the month; Month: every month; Day of week: every day of the week.