GitHub Actions Scheduled Workflows — cron Syntax and Examples

GitHub Actions schedule trigger uses standard cron syntax but runs in UTC only. Workflows can miss their scheduled time during high load — design them to be idempotent.

Build cron expressions with the Cron Builder.

Basic schedule trigger

# .github/workflows/nightly.yml
name: Nightly Build

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 2 * * *'    # 2:00 AM UTC every day
  workflow_dispatch:         # Allow manual trigger

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Run nightly build
        run: npm ci && npm run build

Important: Always add workflow_dispatch alongside schedule so you can test and trigger manually.

Cron syntax for GitHub Actions

# Format: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week
#          0-59   0-23      1-31    1-12     0-6 (0=Sun)

on:
  schedule:
    # Every hour:
    - cron: '0 * * * *'
    
    # Every day at midnight UTC:
    - cron: '0 0 * * *'
    
    # Every Monday at 9 AM UTC:
    - cron: '0 9 * * 1'
    
    # First day of every month at 6 AM:
    - cron: '0 6 1 * *'
    
    # Every 15 minutes:
    - cron: '*/15 * * * *'
    
    # Weekdays at 8 AM UTC (Mon-Fri):
    - cron: '0 8 * * 1-5'

Note: GitHub Actions minimum schedule interval is 5 minutes.

Multiple schedules

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 8 * * 1-5'   # Weekday morning run
    - cron: '0 0 * * 0'     # Sunday midnight cleanup

Timezone handling (UTC only)

GitHub Actions schedule only supports UTC. To convert:

# If your team is in Eastern time (UTC-5 or UTC-4 with DST):
# "9 AM New York" = 14:00 UTC (EST) or 13:00 UTC (EDT)
# Use 14:00 UTC to be consistent with EST, or accept 1-hour shift in summer:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 14 * * 1-5'  # Roughly 9 AM ET (EST)

For precise timezone-aware scheduling, use GitHub Actions Cron with environment variables or use a separate scheduler like AWS EventBridge.

Common scheduled workflow patterns

Dependency updates check

name: Dependency Audit

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 6 * * 1'    # Every Monday at 6 AM UTC

jobs:
  audit:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '20'
      - run: npm audit --audit-level=high
      - name: Check for outdated packages
        run: npx npm-check-updates --errorLevel 2

Database backup

name: Database Backup

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 1 * * *'    # Daily at 1 AM UTC

jobs:
  backup:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      DATABASE_URL: ${{ secrets.DATABASE_URL }}
    steps:
      - name: Create backup
        run: |
          pg_dump $DATABASE_URL | gzip > backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz
      - name: Upload to S3
        run: |
          aws s3 cp backup-*.sql.gz s3://my-backups/db/ \
            --storage-class STANDARD_IA
        env:
          AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}

Weekly report

name: Weekly Report

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 9 * * 1'    # Every Monday at 9 AM UTC
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  report:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Generate report
        run: node scripts/generate-report.js
      - name: Send to Slack
        uses: slackapi/slack-github-action@v1
        with:
          payload: |
            {
              "text": "Weekly report ready: ${{ github.server_url }}/${{ github.repository }}/actions/runs/${{ github.run_id }}"
            }
        env:
          SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL: ${{ secrets.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL }}

Check if run was triggered by schedule

steps:
  - name: Different behavior for scheduled vs manual
    run: |
      if [ "${{ github.event_name }}" == "schedule" ]; then
        echo "Running scheduled job with extra cleanup"
        npm run scheduled-cleanup
      else
        echo "Manual trigger"
      fi

Prevent concurrent runs

name: Scheduled Job

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 * * * *'

concurrency:
  group: scheduled-job
  cancel-in-progress: false  # Don't cancel — wait for previous to finish

Related tools

• Cron Builder — build and validate cron expressions
• Timestamp Converter — convert UTC times
• Hash Generator — generate cache-busting hashes for builds