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Crontab cron expression: on the first day of every quarter
To run a Crontab job on the first day of every quarter, use:
0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *At 00:00 UTC, on the 1st of the month, in Jan, Apr, Jul and Oct.
Your week at a glance
Upcoming runs
| # | Local | UTC | From now |
|---|
Copy-ready code
Why use this schedule
January, April, July and October: quarterly reporting and reviews. Finance and compliance teams in particular run on this rhythm, so these jobs tend to be important and rarely run.
- Quarterly business reviews
- Quarterly access recertification
- Quarterly invoices
First runs, as an example
Starting from 1 January 2027, evaluated in UTC:
| # | Date and time (UTC) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Fri, 01 Jan 2027, 00:00:00 |
| 2 | Thu, 01 Apr 2027, 00:00:00 |
| 3 | Thu, 01 Jul 2027, 00:00:00 |
| 4 | Fri, 01 Oct 2027, 00:00:00 |
| 5 | Sat, 01 Jan 2028, 00:00:00 |
| 6 | Sat, 01 Apr 2028, 00:00:00 |
On the first day of every quarter in every dialect
| System | Expression |
|---|---|
| Crontab (this page) | 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| Quartz | 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 ? |
| Spring | 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| Kubernetes | 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| AWS EventBridge | 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 ? * |
| Jenkins | H 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| GitHub Actions | 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| node-cron | 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| Apache Airflow | 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| Azure Functions | 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| Google Cloud Scheduler | 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
Need to translate a different expression? Use the cron converter.
Ready-to-use Crontab config
Drop this into your project. The expression is the one above.
0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * /path/to/command >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1The Crontab fields, in order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day-of-month (1-31), month (1-12), day-of-week (0-7, 0 and 7 = Sunday).
Things to watch out for in Crontab
- If you set both day-of-month and day-of-week, cron runs when either one matches, not both.
- Fields are minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week. There is no seconds field, so one minute is the finest resolution.
- Cron runs in the server's local time zone. Check it with the date command, or put CRON_TZ=Asia/Kolkata above the line on cronie-based systems.
The common mistake with this schedule
There is no */3 shortcut that starts in January. */3 in the month field gives 1,4,7,10 in Unix cron, but an explicit list is clearer and safer across dialects.
Frequently asked questions
How do I run a Crontab job on the first day of every quarter?
Use 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *. At 00:00 UTC, on the 1st of the month, in Jan, Apr, Jul and Oct.
What is the on the first day of every quarter cron expression in other systems?
Quartz: 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 ?; Spring: 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *; Kubernetes: 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *. The table on this page lists every dialect.
Which time zone does Crontab use for this schedule?
Cron runs in the server's local time zone. Check it with the date command, or put CRON_TZ=Asia/Kolkata above the line on cronie-based systems.