Cron Job Every Day at 1:00 AM – Expression & Examples
The expression 0 1 * * * schedules a task to run once daily at exactly 1:00 AM server time. The fields break down as: minute 0, hour 1, any day of month, any month, and any day of week. This makes it ideal for nightly maintenance work that should happen during low-traffic hours without conflicting with midnight jobs.
How It Works
The expression 0 1 * * * schedules a task to run once daily at exactly 1:00 AM server time. The fields break down as: minute 0, hour 1, any day of month, any month, and any day of week. This makes it ideal for nightly maintenance work that should happen during low-traffic hours without conflicting with midnight jobs.
Common Use Cases
- Generate and email daily summary reports to stakeholders before the workday begins
- Run nightly database cleanup jobs to archive or purge old records accumulated during the previous day
- Trigger a full site backup after midnight once daily traffic has dropped to its lowest point
- Refresh cached data or precompute analytics aggregates so dashboards load fast when users arrive in the morning
Monitor a Job on This Schedule
Writing the 0 1 * * * schedule is only half the job. Cron fires silently — if the run is skipped, the server is down, or the script fails, nothing tells you. A heartbeat monitor closes that gap: your job pings a URL on success, and you get an alert the moment an expected run goes missing. CronJobPro can run this schedule for you as an HTTP job, or watch a job you run elsewhere (cron, CI, Kubernetes) with a dead-man's-switch check.
Schedule This Cron Job Now
Create a free CronJobPro account and use 0 1 * * * to schedule HTTP requests automatically — with monitoring, retries, and notifications built in.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does 0 1 * * * mean in cron?
The expression 0 1 * * * schedules a task to run once daily at exactly 1:00 AM server time. The fields break down as: minute 0, hour 1, any day of month, any month, and any day of week. This makes it ideal for nightly maintenance work that should happen during low-traffic hours without conflicting with midnight jobs.
How do I use this cron expression?
On Linux/macOS, edit your crontab with crontab -e and add:0 1 * * * /path/to/your/script.sh
Or use CronJobPro to schedule HTTP requests with this expression — no server required.
What timezone does cron use?
By default, cron uses the system timezone. CronJobPro lets you set a specific timezone per job, so your schedules are predictable regardless of server location.