Cron Reference

Cron Every Weekday at 6 PM (2026)

Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 means At 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday.

Cron every weekday at 6 PM in 2026 uses 0 18 * * 1-5. This guide covers weekday filtering, timezone checks, and safe end-of-day automation practices.

Cron Expression

0 18 * * 1-5
0Minute
18Hour
*Day
*Month
1-5Weekday

Common use cases

  • Weekday end-of-day reconciliation jobs
  • Business-day exports that skip weekends
  • After-hours reporting for next-day planning
  • Weekday-only digest and summary delivery

How to use this cron schedule

Cron every weekday at 6 PM maps to `0 18 * * 1-5`, which executes at minute zero, hour eighteen, Monday through Friday. If your search phrase is cron every weekday at 6pm, this is the exact expression to use. In 2026, this schedule is common for day-end workflows because it captures a full business day of activity without weekend noise. It is a strong fit for reconciliation, partner exports, and summary pipelines consumed the next morning by operations, finance, and support teams.

Weekday cron jobs need explicit platform validation. Most Unix cron implementations treat `1-5` as Monday through Friday, but timezone settings still determine when that 6 PM run is observed by your team. Confirm whether your scheduler uses UTC or local time and test next-run timestamps in staging before enabling production side effects. Add retries with bounded backoff for transient dependency failures and include output counts in logs so operators can quickly see whether a run completed with expected data volume.

For robust operations in 2026, keep this schedule focused on one outcome and chain follow-up tasks separately. That pattern isolates failures and makes on-call response faster. Publish a completion marker to the channel that consumes the output so stakeholders can trust next-morning dashboards. If weekend execution is later required, add a separate cron expression instead of overloading this weekday one with complex conditionals. Clear schedule boundaries make maintenance easier and reduce regression risk as workflows evolve.

Want to customize this schedule?

Open it in the visual builder to tweak the expression interactively.

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Need to monitor this cron job?

Cronhub tracks your scheduled jobs and alerts you if they fail or run late.

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Platform usage examples

Linux / Unix — crontab
# Edit your crontab
crontab -e

# Add this line to run every weekday at 6 pm (2026)
0 18 * * 1-5 /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/script.php

# Or run a shell script
0 18 * * 1-5 /home/user/scripts/job.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1
GitHub Actions
# .github/workflows/scheduled.yml
name: Scheduled Job

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 18 * * 1-5'

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Run job
        run: echo "Running every weekday at 6 pm (2026)"
Kubernetes CronJob
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-scheduled-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 18 * * 1-5"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: job
            image: my-image:latest
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

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Frequently asked questions

What is the cron expression for every weekday at 6 pm (2026)?

The cron expression is 0 18 * * 1-5. Cron every weekday at 6 PM in 2026 uses 0 18 * * 1-5. This guide covers weekday filtering, timezone checks, and safe end-of-day automation practices.

How do I schedule a cron job to run every weekday at 6 pm (2026) in Linux?

Open your crontab with "crontab -e" and add a new line: 0 18 * * 1-5 /path/to/your/script.sh — this schedules your script to run every weekday at 6 pm (2026). Save and exit; the cron daemon picks up the change immediately.

What does the cron expression "0 18 * * 1-5" mean?

Cron every weekday at 6 PM in 2026 uses 0 18 * * 1-5. This guide covers weekday filtering, timezone checks, and safe end-of-day automation practices.

Can I use "0 18 * * 1-5" in GitHub Actions?

Yes. In your workflow YAML, set the schedule trigger: on: schedule: - cron: '0 18 * * 1-5'. GitHub Actions uses standard 5-field Unix cron syntax, so this expression works as-is.

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