This page will help you quickly and easily set up a cron job to run every month.
The Cron Job/Crontab
To have your task run at a monthly frequency, use the following cron:
0 0 1 * *
This cron command translates to the following (in Human-Readable format):
“Every month.”
What is a Cron Job & Crontab?
A cron job is a task that is scheduled to run at a specified time or interval. Cron jobs are typically used to perform system maintenance or administration tasks, such as backing up data or generating reports.
To create or edit a cron job, users must first open the crontab file using a text editor. The crontab file contains instructions for the cron daemon, which is the program that actually executes the commands specified in the file. Each line in the crontab file represents a single task or command.
Cron Fields
Every cron job uses five fields. Here is an explanation of what each field does in this cron, which runs “every 1 month“:
- Field 1: (0) indicates that the task will be run at minute 0.
- Field 2: (0) indicates that the task will be run at hour 0 (12 am).
- Field 3: (1) indicates that the task will be run on day 1 of every month.
- Field 4: (*) indicates that the task will be run every month.
- Field 5: (*) indicates that the task will be run every day of the week.
FUN FACT: You can use cron to schedule just about anything!.
Use Cases
You might want to set up a crontab or cron job to run every 1 month for several reasons, including:
- Sending out a monthly newsletter
- Generating a report on the previous month’s sales
- Archiving old data that is no longer needed
Similar Cron Jobs
You might also want to run a crontab:
- every 3 months
- every 1 month
- every 2 months
- every 4 months
- every 5 months
- every 4 months on day 2 of the month
- every 4 months on day 24 of the month
- every 3 months on day 25 of the month
FUN FACT: The most common way to edit cron jobs is using the crontab command – this stands for “cron table,” and it contains all the information about when your tasks should be executed..
Wrapping Up
In this article, you learned how to set up a cron job that runs every 1 month. Please share this page with friends and colleagues if you find it useful.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment below.
If you are looking for cron jobs that run at certain minutes, hours, days, weekdays, or months, or if you are looking for miscellaneous cron jobs, then check out our relevant sections, or visit our cron job cheat sheet for a list of hundreds of popular cron jobs.