Cron Expression for Every Day at 2 AM

Cron reads this as: at 02:00.

Next 5 runs

Computed in your browser's local time zone. Cron itself evaluates against the server's zone, which on most cloud hosts is UTC — see time zones & DST if that distinction matters here.

• Calculating…

When to use this schedule

The traditional backup window — low traffic, well clear of the midnight pile-up, and enough runway to finish before the working day. Widely used for database dumps, full filesystem backups and nightly ETL.

What to watch out for

02:00 is precisely where daylight saving transitions happen in most of North America and Europe, which makes it the worst hour in the day for a job that must run exactly once. On spring-forward night the 02:00 hour does not exist; Vixie cron will run the job at 03:00 to compensate, but not every implementation does. On fall-back night it occurs twice. Moving to 0 3 * * * costs nothing and removes the problem permanently.

The crontab line

0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/your-job.sh >> /var/log/your-job.log 2>&1

Redirect the output somewhere you will actually read it — by default cron mails it, and on a host with no mail transport that means it is discarded. See the crontab guide for the surrounding syntax.

Related schedules

Build your own

Need something this page does not cover? 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 collects sixty schedules in one place, and the guides cover crontab syntax, time zones, troubleshooting and production practices.