Run a CRON job on the last day of the month?

Better Stack Team
Updated on October 5, 2023

To run a cron job on the last day of the month, you can use the following format in your crontab file:

 
0 0 28-31 * * [ $(date -d "+1 day" +%d) = "01" ] && /path/to/command

This cron job will run at midnight (0 hours and 0 minutes) on the 28th, 29th, 30th, or 31st of the month. The command to be executed will only run if the next day is the 1st of the next month, which means it's the last day of the current month. Replace /path/to/command with the command you want to run.

🔭 Want to get alerted when your Cron doesn’t run correctly?

Go to Better Stack and start monitoring in 5 minutes.

Here's a breakdown of the format:

  • The first 0 represents the minute (0-59)
  • The second 0 represents the hour (0-23)
  • The third field, 28-31, means the job will run on the 28th, 29th, 30th, or 31st day of the month.
  • The ***** in the fourth and fifth positions represent the month and day of the week (respectively). Using ***** means the job will run every month and every day of the week.
  • The sixth field is a command that checks if the next day is the 1st of the next month using the date command. If it is, then the command specified after the && will be executed.

So the cron job in the above format will run on the last day of the month.

Make your mark

Join the writer's program

Are you a developer and love writing and sharing your knowledge with the world? Join our guest writing program and get paid for writing amazing technical guides. We'll get them to the right readers that will appreciate them.

Write for us
Writer of the month
Marin Bezhanov
Marin is a software engineer and architect with a broad range of experience working...
Build on top of Better Stack

Write a script, app or project on top of Better Stack and share it with the world. Make a public repository and share it with us at our email.

community@betterstack.com

or submit a pull request and help us build better products for everyone.

See the full list of amazing projects on github