Cron every 5 minutes during business hours: the expression, explained, in Laravel
The cron expression for “every 5 minutes during business hours” is */5 9-17 * * 1-5. 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 | */5 | every 5 minutes, starting at 0 |
| hour | 9-17 | from 9 to 17 |
| day of month | * | every day of month |
| month | * | every month |
| day of week | 1-5 | Monday to Friday |
Next five runs (UTC, from now)
- 2026-09-18 09:00 UTC
- 2026-09-18 09:05 UTC
- 2026-09-18 09:10 UTC
- 2026-09-18 09:15 UTC
- 2026-09-18 09:20 UTC
Mistakes people make with this schedule
- "9-17" includes the whole of hour 17, so the last run of the day is at 17:45, not 17:00, and the first is at 09:00. Use "9-16" if 17:00 must be the last.
- 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('*/5 9-17 * * 1-5')
->timezone('UTC')
->withoutOverlapping();Requires the scheduler itself to be started every minute: `* * * * * php artisan schedule:run`.
Questions
Does */5 9-17 * * 1-5 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.