Cron: Every Sunday
0 0 * * 0 fires once a week, every Sunday at midnight — day-of-week 0 in standard cron (7 also works as an alias for Sunday in most implementations). It's the schedule behind the @weekly nickname and a natural anchor point for full weekly backups and week-boundary reports.
0 0 * * 0
Examples & Variations
Common Mistakes
- Assuming 0 and 7 behave differently in the day-of-week field — both mean Sunday in standard cron, so a system that treats them differently is non-standard or buggy.
- Scheduling a Sunday-night job that needs to be complete before Monday morning without leaving enough buffer for a slow run to finish in time.
- Using Sunday midnight as a default 'week boundary' without checking whether your business logic actually defines weeks the same way (some fiscal calendars start weeks on Monday).
Best Practices
- Sunday night into Monday morning is a natural boundary for weekly batch jobs — just build in enough runway before Monday's business hours start.
- If your organization defines the work week as Monday–Sunday rather than Sunday–Saturday, make sure your job's date-range logic matches, since cron's day numbering doesn't encode that assumption.
- @weekly is a convenient shorthand for exactly this schedule if your cron implementation supports nicknames — same effect as 0 0 * * 0 with less to type.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Sunday 0 or 7 in cron?
- Both work and mean the same thing in standard cron — 0 and 7 are both valid representations of Sunday, included for compatibility with different regional week-numbering conventions.
- Is 0 0 * * 0 the same as @weekly?
- Yes — @weekly is a standard nickname that expands to exactly 0 0 * * 0.
- How do I run something every Sunday evening instead of midnight?
- Change the hour field: 0 20 * * 0 runs at 8 PM Sunday instead of midnight.
Related Tools
Cron Parser
Translate cron expressions to plain English
Cron Cheat Sheet
Quick reference for cron syntax, special characters, and shortcuts
Cron Examples Library
Browse and search common cron expression examples
Cron: Every Saturday
The cron expression for every Saturday is 0 0 * * 6, running weekly at midnight. See Saturday scheduling examples and best practices.
Cron: Every Weekday
The cron expression for every weekday (Monday–Friday) is 0 0 * * 1-5. See weekday scheduling examples for business-hours automation.
Cron: Weekends Only
The cron expression for weekends only (Saturday and Sunday) is 0 0 * * 0,6. See weekend-only scheduling examples and use cases.