Cron daily at 18:30: the expression, explained, in Laravel
The cron expression for “daily at 18:30” is 30 18 * * *. This page shows what each field does, the next five times it will fire, the mistake most people make with it, and a working Laravel example you can paste.
The expression
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| minute | 30 | exactly 30 |
| hour | 18 | exactly 18 |
| day of month | * | every day of month |
| month | * | every month |
| day of week | * | every day of week |
Next five runs (UTC, from now)
- 2026-09-18 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-19 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-20 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-21 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-22 18:30 UTC
Mistakes people make with this schedule
- 18:30 in which timezone? A server in UTC fires an hour or two off in Berlin depending on the season. Set the job timezone explicitly.
- Assuming the server clock is your clock. Cron runs in the machine’s timezone unless the runtime says otherwise; the examples here are UTC.
- No lock around a job that might overlap itself, and no alert when it silently stops. That second one is what Supercrontab is for.
Run it in your stack
// routes/console.php
Schedule::command('reports:send')
->cron('30 18 * * *')
->timezone('UTC')
->withoutOverlapping();Requires the scheduler itself to be started every minute: `* * * * * php artisan schedule:run`.
Questions
Does 30 18 * * * run in my local time?
Only if the scheduler is configured for it. crontab uses the system timezone; Vercel and GitHub Actions always use UTC; Laravel and node-cron take a timezone option. In Supercrontab the timezone is a field on the job.
What if the previous run is still going?
Classic cron starts the next run anyway. Add a lock (flock on Linux, withoutOverlapping() in Laravel) or let Supercrontab skip the tick while the previous request is open.
Is there a shorter way to write this?
No. The five-field form is the shortest portable version.