Cron weekdays at 18:30: the expression, explained, in GitHub Actions
The cron expression for “weekdays at 18:30” is 30 18 * * 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 GitHub Actions 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 | 1-5 | Monday to Friday |
Next five runs (UTC, from now)
- 2026-09-18 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-21 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-22 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-23 18:30 UTC
- 2026-09-24 18:30 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 18:30 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
# .github/workflows/cron.yml
on:
schedule:
- cron: '30 18 * * 1-5'
jobs:
run:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- run: curl -fsS https://example.com/cron/runScheduled workflows can be delayed by many minutes at busy hours, and are disabled after 60 days of repo inactivity.
Questions
Does 30 18 * * 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.