Cron Expression 0 18 * * 1-5 Every Weekday at 6PM (2026)
Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 means At 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday.
Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm in 2026. This guide explains weekday semantics, timezone checks, and end-of-day reliability practices.
Cron Expression
Common use cases
- Weekday closeout and reconciliation pipelines
- Day-end exports for finance and operations teams
- Business-day summaries that skip weekend noise
- Weekday-only handoff workflows at close of business
How to use this cron schedule
If your intent is cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm, this line is the direct answer. It means minute zero, hour eighteen, all days and months, but weekdays one through five only. In standard Unix cron, that maps to Monday through Friday at 6:00 PM. In 2026, this schedule is common for end-of-day automation because it captures complete business-day activity while naturally avoiding weekend runs. Teams rely on it for reconciliation, summary generation, and outbound feeds that stakeholders review the next morning.
The most common production mistakes come from implicit platform behavior. Confirm weekday numbering semantics and timezone defaults before shipping changes. A correct cron string can still trigger at the wrong local hour if the scheduler runs in UTC while the business operates in a U.S. timezone. Validate next-run previews and include expected local trigger times in runbooks. Keep the workload idempotent and configure bounded retries so temporary dependency failures recover safely. For high-impact outputs, log record counts and checksums so operators can verify completeness without manual deep dives.
To keep weekday 6 PM automation reliable in 2026, isolate responsibilities and make handoffs explicit. Run extraction, validation, and publication as separate monitored stages instead of one oversized script. Track duration drift, failure streaks, and last-success age to catch degradations early. Alert on repeated misses rather than one-off variance to reduce noise. This page is a canonical reference for `0 18 * * 1-5`, with related links for 9 AM weekday and weekly Sunday alternatives when cadence needs change. If incident triage includes timestamp conversion, the sibling tool at https://epoch-convert.com helps speed up debugging.
Want to customize this schedule?
Open it in the visual builder to tweak the expression interactively.
Open in BuilderNeed to monitor this cron job?
Cronhub tracks your scheduled jobs and alerts you if they fail or run late.
Platform usage examples
# Edit your crontab
crontab -e
# Add this line to run expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm (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/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 expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm (2026)"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: OnFailureRelated developer tools
More free tools for engineering workflows that pair with scheduled jobs:
Frequently asked questions
What is the cron expression for expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm (2026)?
The cron expression is 0 18 * * 1-5. Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm in 2026. This guide explains weekday semantics, timezone checks, and end-of-day reliability practices.
How do I schedule a cron job to run expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm (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 expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm (2026). Save and exit; the cron daemon picks up the change immediately.
What does the cron expression "0 18 * * 1-5" mean?
Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 every weekday at 6pm in 2026. This guide explains weekday semantics, timezone checks, and end-of-day reliability 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.