Cron every Saturday at 09:00: the expression, explained, in Laravel
The cron expression for “every Saturday at 09:00” is 0 9 * * 6. 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 | 0 | exactly 0 |
| hour | 9 | exactly 9 |
| day of month | * | every day of month |
| month | * | every month |
| day of week | 6 | Saturday only |
Next five runs (UTC, from now)
- 2026-09-19 09:00 UTC
- 2026-09-26 09:00 UTC
- 2026-10-03 09:00 UTC
- 2026-10-10 09:00 UTC
- 2026-10-17 09:00 UTC
Mistakes people make with this schedule
- Filling both day-of-month and day-of-week. In classic cron they combine with OR, so "0 9 1 * 6" runs on the 1st and on every Saturday.
- 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('0 9 * * 6')
->timezone('UTC')
->withoutOverlapping();Requires the scheduler itself to be started every minute: `* * * * * php artisan schedule:run`.
Questions
Does 0 9 * * 6 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.