The cron expression to run a job twice a day is 0 0,12 * * *, at midnight and noon. Swap in any two hours, then check both run times in your own timezone.
0minute0,12hour*day*month*weekdayIn Plain English
What your cron expression actually means.
Upcoming Executions
Preview the next 50 times this schedule will trigger.
About 0 0,12 * * *
0 0,12 * * * lists two hours separated by a comma, so the job runs at midnight and again at noon. Any pair works the same way — 0 6,18 * * * runs at 6 AM and 6 PM — while 0 */12 * * * is shorthand for the midnight-and-noon pair only.
Cron reads the five fields as minute hour day month weekday. For this schedule that breaks down as:
| Field | Position | Matches |
|---|---|---|
0 | minute | 0 |
0,12 | hour | 0, 12 |
* | day of month | every day |
* | month | every month |
* | day of week | every day of the week |
New to cron? Read the syntax reference or the FAQ.
Use it in crontab or GitHub Actions
Both snippets are ready to paste. A crontab runs in the server's local timezone; GitHub Actions always evaluates schedules in UTC. For Kubernetes, AWS EventBridge, or Vercel, use the export menu in the calculator above.
crontab
# At 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM, every day 0 0,12 * * * /path/to/command
GitHub Actions workflow
# At 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM, every day
# Note: GitHub Actions always runs schedules in UTC.
on:
schedule:
- cron: '0 0,12 * * *'