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Quartz cron expression: on the first day of every quarter
To run a Quartz job on the first day of every quarter, use:
0 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 |
|---|---|
| Quartz (this page) | 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 ? |
| Spring | 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * |
| Crontab | 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 Quartz config
Drop this into your project. The expression is the one above.
Trigger trigger = TriggerBuilder.newTrigger()
.withIdentity("myTrigger", "group1")
.withSchedule(CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 ?")
.inTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")))
.build();The Quartz fields, in order: second (0-59), minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day-of-month (1-31), month (1-12), day-of-week (1-7, 1 = Sunday), year (1970-2199, optional).
Things to watch out for in Quartz
- You must put ? in the day-of-week field whenever you set a day of month.
- Six fields: seconds first, then minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week. Use 0 in seconds to fire at the start of the minute.
- Quartz uses the JVM default time zone unless you set one: CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule(expr).inTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")).
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 Quartz job on the first day of every quarter?
Use 0 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?
Spring: 0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *; Crontab: 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 Quartz use for this schedule?
Quartz uses the JVM default time zone unless you set one: CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule(expr).inTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")).