Cron example
Cron Every 3 Months
A step in the month field: the 1st of every third month, counting from January. That gives four runs a year — 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October — which happen to be the calendar quarters, because the step starts at the bottom of the field and twelve divides evenly by three.
By NaveenKumar T · Updated · 5-field crontab expression
What each field means
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0 | Minute 0 |
| Hour | 0 | Hour 0 |
| Day of month | 1 | Day 1 |
| Month | */3 | Every 3 months, starting in January |
| Day of week | * | Every day of the week |
Next 5 run times
Computing the next runs in your timezone…
Month steps count from January, always
The month field runs from 1 to 12, and a step samples that range from its lowest value. So a step of 3 gives months 1, 4, 7 and 10 no matter when you install the crontab — installing in May does not make the next run August. If you need a different phase, write the range explicitly: 2-12/3 gives February, May, August and November.
The step also resets every year rather than counting continuously. That only matters for steps that do not divide 12: a step of 5 produces January, June and November, and then January again — a seven-month gap across the year boundary instead of five. Steps of 2, 3, 4 and 6 are the only ones that stay even.
Pair it with a safe day of the month
The day-of-month field still applies, and it is where quarterly schedules break. Pinning it to 31 means the job never runs in April, June, September or November; pinning it to 30 kills February. The 1st is the only date that exists in all twelve months, which is why quarterly jobs almost always run at the start of the quarter and report on the one that just ended.
Leave the day-of-week field as an asterisk, too. Restricting both day fields switches classic cron from AND to OR semantics, and a quarterly job would suddenly fire every week — the trap described in detail on the first day of the month page.
Step form versus explicit list
0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * describes exactly the same four dates as the step form and is arguably clearer, since the months are visible rather than implied. That explicit version is what the every quarter page covers, and it is the one to reach for when your quarters do not start in January.
For a fiscal year beginning in April, list 4,7,10,1 — order does not matter to cron — or use the offset range 4-12/3 plus a separate line for January. Whichever form you choose, add a comment above the line: quarterly jobs run four times a year, so a mistake takes three months to notice.
Build a variant of this schedule with dropdowns and check the next ten runs before you install it.
Open the cron generatorRelated cron examples
Browse every schedule on the cron expression generator, read the cron expression syntax guide for the rules behind the five fields, or the developer tools guides for the longer explanations.