Cron Expression 0 18 * * 1-5 Weekdays at 6 PM (2026)
Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 means At 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday.
Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 runs at 6 PM on weekdays. This 2026 page explains weekday scheduling and end-of-day automation best practices.
Cron Expression
Common use cases
- Weekday end-of-day reconciliation jobs
- Business-day reporting after office hours
- Partner exports that should skip weekends
- Daily weekday digest and summary workflows
How to use this cron schedule
Cron expression `0 18 * * 1-5` means run at minute zero, hour eighteen, on weekdays Monday through Friday. In plain language, this is 6:00 PM on business days. If your intent is weekdays at 6 PM, this is the direct cron mapping. In 2026, it is a common schedule for end-of-day pipelines because it captures full business-day data while avoiding weekend runs. That reduces unnecessary compute and keeps reports aligned to the periods teams actively review.
This expression is especially useful for reconciliation, post-close summaries, and exports consumed the next morning. To run it safely, verify timezone behavior and weekday numbering in your scheduler. Most cron systems interpret `1-5` as Monday through Friday, but a quick staging check still prevents surprises. Add retries with bounded backoff and emit output counts so operators can confirm job health. For workflows with external dependencies, capture failures clearly to avoid hidden data gaps that only surface in stakeholder dashboards.
Production reliability in 2026 depends on explicit ownership and observability. Keep this weekday cron narrow in scope, then chain secondary tasks rather than bundling every step into one command. Publish completion status to your team channel, and alert on repeated misses so incidents are caught before the next business day begins. If weekend support is needed later, add a separate cron expression rather than overloading this one. Clear schedule boundaries make operations easier to maintain over time.
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 weekdays 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/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 weekdays at 6 pm (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 weekdays at 6 pm (2026)?
The cron expression is 0 18 * * 1-5. Cron expression 0 18 * * 1-5 runs at 6 PM on weekdays. This 2026 page explains weekday scheduling and end-of-day automation best practices.
How do I schedule a cron job to run expression 0 18 * * 1-5 weekdays 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 expression 0 18 * * 1-5 weekdays 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 expression 0 18 * * 1-5 runs at 6 PM on weekdays. This 2026 page explains weekday scheduling and end-of-day automation best 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.