Cron Every Hour

Understanding the Expression

Field	Value	Meaning
Minute	0	At minute 0 (top of hour)
Hour	*	Every hour
Day of month	*	Every day
Month	*	Every month
Day of week	*	Every day of the week

Example Usage

Basic crontab entry

0 * * * * /path/to/your/script.sh

With logging

0 * * * * /path/to/script.sh >> /var/log/hourly.log 2>&1

With monitoring

0 * * * * /path/to/script.sh && curl -fsS https://api.cronsignal.io/ping/YOUR_CHECK_ID

Common Use Cases

• Log rotation: Compress or archive logs every hour
• Data sync: Pull data from external APIs
• Report generation: Create hourly summaries
• Cache refresh: Update cached data periodically
• Cleanup tasks: Remove temporary files

Variations

Every hour at minute 30

30 * * * *

Runs at 00:30, 01:30, 02:30, etc. Useful to avoid congestion at the top of the hour.

Every 2 hours

0 */2 * * *

Runs at 00:00, 02:00, 04:00, etc.

Every hour during work hours only

0 9-17 * * 1-5

Runs hourly from 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday.

Monitoring Tips

For hourly jobs, set your monitoring with:

• Schedule: Every 1 hour
• Grace period: 10-15 minutes

This gives your job time to complete before alerting, but catches failures within the same hour.