Cron weekdays at 04:00: the expression, explained, in Laravel

The cron expression for “weekdays at 04:00” is 0 4 * * 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

0 4 * * 1-5

Field	Value	Meaning
minute	0	exactly 0
hour	4	exactly 4
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 04:00 UTC
2026-09-21 04:00 UTC
2026-09-22 04:00 UTC
2026-09-23 04:00 UTC
2026-09-24 04:00 UTC

Mistakes people make with this schedule

Day-of-week "1-5" is Monday to Friday, but cron knows nothing about public holidays. The job still fires at 04:00 on Christmas Day; skip holidays in the job, not in the expression.
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

Linux crontab Laravel WordPress Next.js / Vercel Node.js Python Docker GitHub Actions

// routes/console.php
Schedule::command('reports:send')
    ->cron('0 4 * * 1-5')
    ->timezone('UTC')
    ->withoutOverlapping();

Requires the scheduler itself to be started every minute: `* * * * * php artisan schedule:run`.

Questions

Does 0 4 * * 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.