Spring cron expression: every 12 hours

Use 0 0 0,12 * * *. At minute 0, during hours 00, 12.

To run a Spring job every 12 hours, use:

0 0 0,12 * * *

At minute 0, during hours 00, 12.

Spring @Scheduled (6-field) expression

Schedule time zone

Your week at a glance

fewer more runs

Upcoming runs

#	Local	UTC	From now

Twice a day, at midnight and noon. Written as a list, which is clearer than */12.

Starting from 1 January 2027, evaluated in UTC:

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

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

Spring @Scheduled

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 0,12 * * *", zone = "UTC")
public void runJob() {
    // ...
}

application.properties

app.job.cron=0 0 0,12 * * *
# @Scheduled(cron = "${app.job.cron}")

The Spring fields, in order: second (0-59), minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day-of-month (1-31), month (1-12), day-of-week (0-7, 0 and 7 = Sunday).

Spring uses six fields (no year). The leading 0 is the seconds field.
Spring evaluates in the server time zone by default. Add zone = "UTC" (or any ZoneId) to @Scheduled to make it explicit.

In UTC, midnight and noon fall at odd local times. For India, 00:00 and 12:00 UTC are 05:30 and 17:30 IST.

How do I run a Spring job every 12 hours?

Use 0 0 0,12 * * *. At minute 0, during hours 00, 12.

What is the every 12 hours cron expression in other systems?

Quartz: 0 0 0,12 * * ?; Crontab: 0 0,12 * * *; Kubernetes: 0 0,12 * * *. The table on this page lists every dialect.

Which time zone does Spring use for this schedule?

Spring evaluates in the server time zone by default. Add zone = "UTC" (or any ZoneId) to @Scheduled to make it explicit.