On the machine that runs it, in whatever timezone that machine is set to — which is UTC on most servers and containers and is not your own. If the job must run at local midnight, set the timezone on the scheduler, not in the expression: cron has no field for it.

Does it work in GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud schedulers?

The five fields do. What differs is everything around them: some accept names like @daily, Kubernetes CronJobs take the same five, and GitHub Actions runs scheduled workflows late under load. Paste the expression, but do not assume the promptness.

Can I read an expression I already have?

Yes — the cron parser page does that. Paste an expression and it lists the dates it will next run and the values each field allows, which is the check worth doing before you trust one somebody else wrote.

Is midnight 0 0 or 0 24?

0 0. The hour field runs from 0 to 23, so midnight is hour 0 at minute 0, the first minute of the new day; 24 is refused. A job meant to close the day just before midnight is 59 23 * * *, which runs at 23:59.

Why did my daily job run at 1am instead of midnight?

Because the machine keeps UTC and you are an hour ahead of it, as the UK is in summer (BST). 0 0 * * * then runs at 1:00 your time; in winter it moves back to 0:00. Set the scheduler’s timezone (for example Europe/London) if it must follow your clock.

Is anything sent anywhere?

No. The expression is built and read back in your browser, and nothing is uploaded. It is free, with no account.

Cron every day at midnight

It is 0 0 * * *, in the machine’s own timezone.

Examples temporarily replace the input and settings. You can restore your previous work.

Input0 characters

Or pick a common one

cron: • • • • •

Output

• • • • •

  •••••••••• •••••• ••••••
  • •••••••• •••• ••••••
  • • •••••• ••• •• ••••• ••••••
  • • • •••• ••••• ••••••
  • • • • •• ••• •• •••• ••••• •••••• •• • • ••• • •• •••• ••••••••
  • • • • •

  •• •••• •••
    ••••••        •
    ••••          •
    ••• •• •••••  •••••
    •••••         •••••
    ••• •• ••••   •••••

  •••• •••• •••• •••••••••••••• ••••••
    •••••••••• •••••  •••
    •••••••••• •••••  •••
    •••••••••• •••••  •••
    •••••••••• •••••  •••
    •••••••••• •••••  •••

Your files stay on your device

This tool runs entirely in your browser. What you paste is processed on your device and is never sent to a server, so it is safe to use with tokens, keys and unpublished text.

Example

Example: a nightly backup at midnight, and what “midnight” means on a UTC server

A small web shop in Manchester wants its database backed up once a night when nobody is ordering. The page starts on “Every day at midnight”: 0 0 * * *. The server, like most, runs on UTC. Below, other ways of writing a nightly job, each typed into the box with the menu set to none, and what the builder made of them:

Read 0 0 * * * from the left: minute 0, hour 0, every day of the month, every month, every day of the week.
On a UTC server it runs at midnight UTC. UK clocks are on BST from 29 March to 25 October 2026, so then it runs at 1:00 in Manchester; in winter at 0:00.
To run at UK midnight all year, set the scheduler’s timezone to Europe/London rather than changing the expression.

Typed in words	Expression
every day at midnight	0 0 * * *
every day at 12am	0 0 * * *
at 0:05 every day	5 0 * * *
every day at 11:59pm	59 23 * * *
every weekday at midnight	0 0 * * 1-5
at midnight on sundays	0 0 * * 0

For the backup, 0 0 * * * is right. 12am is midnight, so it gives the same line; 12pm is noon (0 12 * * *). Midnight is also safe from the clock changes: UK clocks change at 1am and US clocks at 2am, so a job at 0:00 is never skipped or run twice.

How it works

The expression is already there: 0 0 * * *. The five fields under it are minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week, in that order.
Copy it into your crontab, your CI schedule or your cloud scheduler. The same five fields mean the same thing in all of them.
To change it, set the menu back to none and describe the schedule in your own words — "every 2 hours", "at 5pm on weekdays" — and it is built and read back to you.
Check the reading, not the expression. What the page shows underneath comes from parsing what was built, so it is what a machine would do with it rather than what we meant.

Frequently asked questions

Midnight where?: On the machine that runs it, in whatever timezone that machine is set to — which is UTC on most servers and containers and is not your own. If the job must run at local midnight, set the timezone on the scheduler, not in the expression: cron has no field for it.
Does it work in GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud schedulers?: The five fields do. What differs is everything around them: some accept names like @daily, Kubernetes CronJobs take the same five, and GitHub Actions runs scheduled workflows late under load. Paste the expression, but do not assume the promptness.
Can I read an expression I already have?: Yes — the cron parser page does that. Paste an expression and it lists the dates it will next run and the values each field allows, which is the check worth doing before you trust one somebody else wrote.
Is midnight 0 0 or 0 24?: 0 0. The hour field runs from 0 to 23, so midnight is hour 0 at minute 0, the first minute of the new day; 24 is refused. A job meant to close the day just before midnight is 59 23 * * *, which runs at 23:59.
Why did my daily job run at 1am instead of midnight?: Because the machine keeps UTC and you are an hour ahead of it, as the UK is in summer (BST). 0 0 * * * then runs at 1:00 your time; in winter it moves back to 0:00. Set the scheduler’s timezone (for example Europe/London) if it must follow your clock.
Is anything sent anywhere?: No. The expression is built and read back in your browser, and nothing is uploaded. It is free, with no account.