Cron expression: Once a year (January 1st)
Runs once a year on January 1st at midnight.
0 0 1 1 *Standard 5-field cron format — works with crontab, GitHub Actions, Vercel Cron, Kubernetes CronJobs, and most schedulers.
What does 0 0 1 1 * mean?
The cron expression 0 0 1 1 * runs once a year (January 1st). A standard cron expression has five fields — minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week — and here is what each field does:
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0 | At minute 0 |
| Hour | 0 | At midnight (00:00) |
| Day of month | 1 | On day 1 of the month |
| Month | 1 | In January |
| Day of week | * | Every day of the week |
How to use it
To run a job on this schedule with Unix cron, open your crontab with crontab -e and add a line that combines the expression with your command:
0 0 1 1 * /path/to/your-command
The same expression works in most modern schedulers — paste it into a GitHub Actions schedule trigger, a Vercel Cron job, a Kubernetes CronJob schedule, or your cloud task runner.
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More cron examples
- First day of every month —
0 0 1 * * - On the 15th of every month —
0 0 15 * * - Every quarter —
0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * - Every minute —
* * * * * - Every 5 minutes —
*/5 * * * * - Every 10 minutes —
*/10 * * * *
Frequently asked questions
What is the cron expression for "once a year (January 1st)"?
The cron expression for once a year (January 1st) is 0 0 1 1 *. It uses the standard 5-field format: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week.
How do I schedule a job to run once a year (January 1st)?
Add the line "0 0 1 1 * /path/to/your-command" to your crontab (run "crontab -e"), or paste 0 0 1 1 * into the schedule field of your CI/CD pipeline, serverless scheduler, or Kubernetes CronJob.
Does this cron expression use a timezone?
No. Cron expressions have no timezone of their own — they run in the timezone of the server or scheduler executing them. Set the timezone in your scheduler's configuration if you need a specific one.