Weekly Schedules

Weekly cron schedules—jobs that run once a week on a specific day—are among the most practical scheduling patterns. The weekly cadence strikes a balance between the immediacy of daily jobs and the infrequency of monthly processes: weekly status reports, database maintenance, subscription renewal processing, and content publication cycles all operate on a seven-day clock.

Weekly Cron Syntax

A weekly schedule specifies a single value in the day-of-week field. 0 9 * * 1 or 0 9 * * MON runs every Monday at 9:00 AM. 0 17 * * FRI runs every Friday at 5:00 PM. Common patterns: 0 8 * * 1 (Monday 8 AM report), 0 0 * * 0 (Sunday midnight cleanup), 0 6 * * 5 (Friday 6 AM backup).

Common Weekly Scheduling Use Cases

• Weekly metrics reports: 0 7 * * 1 fires at 7:00 AM every Monday for the previous week's summary.
• Database maintenance: 0 2 * * 0 (Sunday 2 AM) for weekly VACUUM and index health checks.
• Security scans: 0 4 * * 1 for weekly vulnerability scanning.
• Full backups: 0 1 * * 0 (Sunday 1 AM) for clean weekly restore points.
• Credential rotation: 0 3 * * 6 for automated API key rotation.
• Stale data cleanup: 0 0 * * 0 for purging expired records accumulated over the week.

Best Practices for Weekly Cron Jobs

• Use named day abbreviations. 0 9 * * MON is self-documenting; 0 9 * * 1 requires remembering the numbering.
• Implement a catch-up strategy for missed runs. A missed weekly run is a 7-day gap. Monitor "last successful run" timestamps and alert if the gap exceeds 8 days.
• Coordinate weekly jobs to avoid resource conflicts. Maintain a centralized schedule registry across teams.