Cron expression for weekdays at 5pm
At 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday
0
minute
17
hour
*
day (month)
*
month
1-5
day (week)
At 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday
Try this expression in the interactive tool:
Open in cron explainer →Next 10 scheduled runs
#1Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 17:00
#2Fri, 17 Apr 2026, 17:00
#3Mon, 20 Apr 2026, 17:00
#4Tue, 21 Apr 2026, 17:00
#5Wed, 22 Apr 2026, 17:00
#6Thu, 23 Apr 2026, 17:00
#7Fri, 24 Apr 2026, 17:00
#8Mon, 27 Apr 2026, 17:00
#9Tue, 28 Apr 2026, 17:00
#10Wed, 29 Apr 2026, 17:00
Common use cases
Close-of-business on weekdays is the standard trigger for end-of-day summaries, daily performance reports, and business-hours wrap-up tasks. This pattern avoids running on weekends when there's no business activity to report on.
Common uses include sending daily sales summaries, triggering end-of-day financial reconciliation, generating close-of-business compliance reports, and posting "today's highlights" to team Slack channels.
Platform-specific syntax
crontab
0 17 * * 1-5 /path/to/script.shAWS EventBridge
cron(0 17 ? * MON-FRI *)GitHub Actions
schedule:
- cron: '0 17 * * 1-5'Kubernetes
schedule: "0 17 * * 1-5"Technical breakdown
The expression 0 17 * * 1-5 has five fields: minute=0, hour=17, day (month)=*, month=*, day (week)=1-5. At 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make this run at 5 PM in a specific timezone?
In crontab, set TZ=America/New_York before the entry. In Kubernetes v1.25+, set .spec.timeZone. For GitHub Actions (UTC only), offset: 5 PM EST = 0 22 * * 1-5 in UTC.