0 */2 * * *
Cron reads this as: minute 0, past every 2nd hour.
Next 5 runs
These times are in your browser's local time zone. Cron itself uses the server's zone, which on most cloud hosts is UTC. If the difference matters here, see time zones & DST.
- Calculating…
When to use this schedule
It runs twelve times a day, at 00:00, 02:00, 04:00 and so on through 22:00. It suits incremental backups, medium-weight syncs and report refreshes where an hourly run would be wasteful.
What to watch out for
The common mistake is * */2 * * *. With a wildcard minute it runs sixty times in each of those hours, which is 720 times a day instead of 12. The minute field must be a fixed value. The cycle is also anchored to midnight, so "every 2 hours" means the even hours, not two hours after whenever you installed the job.
The crontab line
0 */2 * * * /usr/local/bin/your-job.sh >> /var/log/your-job.log 2>&1Send the output to a log you will read. By default cron mails it, and on a host with no mail transport that mail is silently dropped. See the crontab guide for the surrounding syntax.
Related schedules
| Expression | Schedule |
|---|---|
* */2 * * * | The common mistake: 720 runs/day |
0 */3 * * * | Every 3 hours |
0 */4 * * * | Every 4 hours |
Build your own
If this page doesn't cover the schedule you need, compose it field by field in the visual builder, or paste an expression you already have into the explainer for a per-field breakdown. The examples library has sixty schedules in one place, and the guides cover crontab syntax, time zones, troubleshooting and production practices.