Is 0 0 * * * the same as @daily?

Yes — @daily (and its alias @midnight) is a standard cron nickname that expands to exactly 0 0 * * *, supported by most Linux cron daemons.

How do I run a daily job at a specific time other than midnight?

Change the hour and minute fields directly — 0 6 * * * runs daily at 6:00 AM, 30 14 * * * runs daily at 2:30 PM.

Does 'every day' mean all 7 days including weekends?

Yes, 0 0 * * * runs all 7 days since the day-of-week field is wildcarded. Restrict it to weekdays with 0 0 * * 1-5 if weekends should be excluded.

Cron: Every Day

0 0 * * * runs once a day, at midnight — the default "daily" schedule used for backups, batch reports, and nightly maintenance across almost every platform that supports cron. Both the minute and hour fields are pinned to 0, and every other field stays wildcarded.

0 0 * * *

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Examples & Variations

0 0 * * *

Every day at midnight

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0 6 * * *

Every day at 6:00 AM

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30 23 * * *

Every day at 11:30 PM

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Common Mistakes

Assuming "midnight" is the same moment everywhere — a daily cron job on a UTC server fires at a different local time than one on a server set to your timezone.
Scheduling every heavy daily job at exactly midnight, causing a resource spike when backups, reports, and cleanup jobs all compete for CPU and I/O at the same second.
Not accounting for daylight saving time: a job scheduled in local time can run twice, or not at all, on the two days a year clocks change.

Best Practices

Stagger daily jobs across quiet hours (e.g. 1 AM, 2 AM, 3 AM) instead of stacking them all at midnight.
Run cron in UTC on servers when the exact wall-clock time doesn't matter to users, to sidestep DST entirely.
For genuinely user-facing "once a day" behavior (like a digest email), pick a time in the user's local timezone explicitly rather than relying on server time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 0 0 * * * the same as @daily?: Yes — @daily (and its alias @midnight) is a standard cron nickname that expands to exactly 0 0 * * *, supported by most Linux cron daemons.
How do I run a daily job at a specific time other than midnight?: Change the hour and minute fields directly — 0 6 * * * runs daily at 6:00 AM, 30 14 * * * runs daily at 2:30 PM.
Does 'every day' mean all 7 days including weekends?: Yes, 0 0 * * * runs all 7 days since the day-of-week field is wildcarded. Restrict it to weekdays with 0 0 * * 1-5 if weekends should be excluded.

Related Tools

Cron Parser

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Cron Cheat Sheet

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Cron Examples Library

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Cron: Every Hour

The cron expression for every hour is 0 * * * *. See hourly scheduling examples, common mistakes, and best practices for cron jobs.

Cron: Every Week

The cron expression for every week is 0 0 * * 0, running once weekly on Sunday at midnight. See weekly scheduling examples and best practices.

Cron: Every Month

The cron expression for every month is 0 0 1 * *, running once on the 1st at midnight. See monthly scheduling examples and best practices.