Cron Expression for Every Hour

Cron reads this as: at the start of every hour.

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

Runs at the top of every hour. The workhorse schedule for log rotation, hourly rollups, cache warming and anything that needs to be fresh within the hour but not sooner. @hourly is an accepted synonym on most implementations.

What to watch out for

The minute field matters more than people expect: * * * * * in the hour slot is fine, but writing * */1 * * * by mistake gives you a job that runs every minute. Also, everything on the box fires at :00 — offsetting to 7 * * * * or 23 * * * * costs nothing and avoids the pile-up.

The crontab line

0 * * * * /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.