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Kubernetes cron

Kubernetes cron expression: on the 15th of every month at midnight

To run a Kubernetes job on the 15th of every month at midnight, use:

0 0 15 * *

At 00:00 UTC, on the 15th of the month.

Your week at a glance
fewer more runs

Upcoming runs

#LocalUTCFrom now

Copy-ready code

Why use this schedule

Mid-month jobs, such as payroll runs or the second half of a twice-monthly billing cycle. Paired with the 1st of the month it splits a month into two even halves.

First runs, as an example

Starting from 1 January 2027, evaluated in UTC:

#Date and time (UTC)
1Fri, 15 Jan 2027, 00:00:00
2Mon, 15 Feb 2027, 00:00:00
3Mon, 15 Mar 2027, 00:00:00
4Thu, 15 Apr 2027, 00:00:00
5Sat, 15 May 2027, 00:00:00
6Tue, 15 Jun 2027, 00:00:00

On the 15th of every month at midnight in every dialect

SystemExpression
Kubernetes (this page)0 0 15 * *
Quartz0 0 0 15 * ?
Spring0 0 0 15 * *
Crontab0 0 15 * *
AWS EventBridge0 0 15 * ? *
JenkinsH 0 15 * *
GitHub Actions0 0 15 * *
node-cron0 0 15 * *
Apache Airflow0 0 15 * *
Azure Functions0 0 0 15 * *
Google Cloud Scheduler0 0 15 * *

Need to translate a different expression? Use the cron converter.

Ready-to-use Kubernetes config

Drop this into your project. The expression is the one above.

CronJob manifest
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 0 15 * *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: busybox
              command: ["sh", "-c", "date"]

The Kubernetes 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 Kubernetes

The common mistake with this schedule

The 15th can be a weekend. Cron cannot shift to the next business day on its own; check in the job, or use Quartz 15W for the nearest weekday.

Frequently asked questions

How do I run a Kubernetes job on the 15th of every month at midnight?

Use 0 0 15 * *. At 00:00 UTC, on the 15th of the month.

What is the on the 15th of every month at midnight cron expression in other systems?

Quartz: 0 0 0 15 * ?; Spring: 0 0 0 15 * *; Crontab: 0 0 15 * *. The table on this page lists every dialect.

Which time zone does Kubernetes use for this schedule?

Set spec.timeZone (Kubernetes 1.27+) to a name like Asia/Kolkata. Without it the schedule follows the controller's time zone, usually UTC.

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