Cron: first of the month — 0 0 1 * *

Midnight on the 1st of every month — billing runs, monthly reports, log rotation. The @monthly macro expands to exactly this expression.

The natural follow-up — "and the LAST day of the month?" — has no standard-cron answer: the L modifier that does it is Quartz-only (the builder below will show you if you switch dialects). The portable workaround is to run at 0 0 28-31 * * and let the job exit unless tomorrow is the 1st ([ "$(date -d tomorrow +\%d)" = "01" ]). Also remember the crontab file itself: % is special in crontab lines and must be escaped as \% — date formats are the usual victim.

What this schedule does, field by field

Field	Value	Meaning
Minute	`0`	at minute 0
Hour	`0`	at hour 0 (midnight, server time)
Day of month	`1`	on the 1st
Month	`*`	every month
Day of week	`*`	any weekday

0Minute

0Hour

1Day

*Month

*Weekday

At 12:00 AM, on day 1 of the month

Presetsclick to load — converted to the active dialect

Visual buildertwo-way synced with the expression above

Minute0

Hour0

Day1

Month*

Every value (*)

Weekday*

Every value (*)

Next 10 runsin

No upcoming runs — the schedule may be entirely in the past (e.g. a fixed year).

Field referenceStandard

#	Field	Allowed values	Special characters
1	Minute	`0–59`	`* , - /`
2	Hour	`0–23`	`* , - /`
3	Day of month	`1–31`	`* , - /`
4	Month	`1–12 or JAN–DEC`	`* , - /`
5	Day of week	`0–7 or SUN–SAT (0 and 7 = Sunday)`	`* , - /`

Macrosstandard crontab shortcuts — click to use

— Once an hour, at minute 0 (≡ 0 * * * *)

— Once a day, at 00:00 (≡ 0 0 * * *)

— Once a week, Sunday at 00:00 (≡ 0 0 * * 0)

— Once a month, on the 1st at 00:00 (≡ 0 0 1 * *)

— Once a year, on 1 January at 00:00 (≡ 0 0 1 1 *)

— Once, at system startup — has no schedule, so next runs cannot be computed

Everything is computed on your device — nothing is uploaded.

Full cron builder & explainer every day at midnight 0 0 * * *every monday 0 9 * * 1every hour 0 * * * *