Hourly
0 */6 * * *
Run four times a day, 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00.
This preview is live: the table below shows the actual next run times for 0 */6 * * * in your time zone, recomputed in your browser. Change the expression, dialect, or zone to experiment, then copy the result.
What 0 */6 * * * means
0 */6 * * * fires four times a day at the quarter-day marks: midnight, 6am, noon, and 6pm. It is one of the most popular "a few times a day" cadences because the marks are easy to remember and align with morning, midday, evening, and overnight windows.
Six-hourly scheduling is the natural home for jobs that should run more than daily but where each run is non-trivial: full backups, large reindexes, or syncs against an upstream that updates a few times a day.
Field-by-field breakdown
Unix cron has five fields. Here is what each one is doing in this expression:
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0 | minute = 0 |
| Hour | */6 | every 6 (step) across hour |
| Day of month | * | every day-of-month |
| Month | * | every month |
| Day of week | * | every day-of-week |
Every 6 hours in every scheduler
The same cadence written for the seven cron dialects you are most likely to meet. Copy the line for the system you target, the field count and day-of-week numbering differ between them.
| Scheduler | Expression | Copy |
|---|---|---|
| Unix / crontab | 0 */6 * * * | |
| GitHub Actions | 0 */6 * * * | |
| Kubernetes CronJob | 0 */6 * * * | |
| Vercel Cron | 0 */6 * * * | |
| Quartz | 0 0 */6 * * * * | |
| Spring | 0 0 */6 * * * | |
| AWS EventBridge | 0 */6 * * * * |
When you would use 0 */6 * * *
- Four-times-daily full backups across time-of-day windows.
- Large search-index rebuilds.
- Replicating data to a reporting warehouse.
The gotcha worth knowing
All four runs use the same minute (:00). If they each hammer the same downstream service, stagger them, e.g. 15 */6 * * * for a second job, so they do not all fire on the exact same instant.
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0 */6 * * * FAQ
What does the cron expression 0 */6 * * * mean?
0 */6 * * * means: Run four times a day, 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00. 0 */6 * * * fires four times a day at the quarter-day marks: midnight, 6am, noon, and 6pm. It is one of the most popular "a few times a day" cadences because the marks are easy to remember and align with morning, midday, evening, and overnight windows.
How do I write "every 6 hours" in GitHub Actions?
Use 0 */6 * * * in the schedule's cron field. All four runs use the same minute (:00). If they each hammer the same downstream service, stagger them, e.g. 15 */6 * * * for a second job, so they do not all fire on the exact same instant.
How do I write "every 6 hours" for AWS EventBridge?
EventBridge uses six fields with a required year and a ? placeholder in one day field: 0 */6 * * * *. Wrap it as cron(0 */6 * * * *) in the console or CloudFormation.
What is the Quartz equivalent of 0 */6 * * *?
Quartz is seconds-first with a trailing year, so the equivalent is 0 0 */6 * * * *. Remember Quartz numbers Sunday as 1, the opposite of Unix.
Related cron patterns
More cron tools
Browse the full set of cron pattern pages, or jump to the interactive tools: the cron expression builder for designing a schedule from scratch, the cron cheat sheet for a side-by-side reference, the cron timezone translator for moving a schedule between zones and dialects, and the GitHub Actions cron picker for DST-stable CI schedules.