First Monday of month with Cron Studio
This opens the Quartz expression 0 0 9 ? * MON#1, which fires at 9:00 on the first Monday of each month. The page also shows why the five-field crontab version most people write runs far more often.
- Check the plain-English line and the next five first-Mondays.
- In Quartz, Spring or AWS EventBridge copy the expression; the # does the work.
- On plain cron use the Monday schedule plus a date test as in the notes below.
- Change #1 to #2, #3 or #4 for other weeks.
What to know
The tempting crontab line is 0 9 1-7 * 1: days 1 to 7, and Monday. It does not mean "Monday within days 1 to 7". When both the day-of-month and the day-of-week field are restricted, Vixie cron runs the job when either matches, so this runs on days 1 to 7 of every month and on every Monday.
The reliable plain-cron form is 0 9 * * 1 [ "$(date +\%d)" -le 7 ] && /path/to/job: run every Monday and continue only when the day of the month is 7 or less, which can only be the first Monday. Quartz, Spring and AWS EventBridge avoid the problem with # (MON#1 is the first Monday, FRI#3 the third Friday), and L after a weekday (FRIL) is the last Friday.
Updated · Cosmovex
Questions
What is the cron expression for the first Monday of every month?
Quartz, Spring and AWS EventBridge: 0 0 9 ? * MON#1. Plain unix cron has no equivalent; run on every Monday and add a test that the date is 7 or less.
Why does 0 9 1-7 * 1 run every Monday?
When day-of-month and day-of-week are both set, standard cron ORs them. The job runs on days 1-7 and on all Mondays.
How do I get the last Friday of the month?
In Quartz, Spring and AWS use FRIL (for example 0 0 17 ? * FRIL). On plain cron, run every Friday and test that the date plus 7 days is in the next month.
Does MON#1 work in GitHub Actions or Kubernetes?
No. They use five-field unix cron, which has no # or L. Use the date-test form there.
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