DevEquiv

    Unix Cron to GitHub Actions Schedule Compatibility Checker

    GitHub Actions' `schedule` trigger uses the same 5-field cron syntax as Unix cron — this checker highlights the platform-specific caveats that a field-for-field identical expression can still hide.

    Exact match

    Unix cron
    */5 * * * *
    GitHub Actions schedule
    */5 * * * *

    Main limitation: GitHub Actions schedules always evaluate in UTC — there is no per-workflow time zone setting, so an expression tuned for a local time zone on a traditional cron daemon will fire at a different wall-clock time on GitHub.

    Examples

    Every 5 minutes

    Unix cron */5 * * * *
    GitHub Actions schedule */5 * * * *

    Syntactically identical and within GitHub's documented minimum practical interval, but still subject to best-effort delivery during high load — it is not a hard real-time guarantee.

    Daily at 2am UTC

    Unix cron 0 2 * * *
    GitHub Actions schedule 0 2 * * *

    Identical syntax, but remember this fires at 2am UTC specifically — convert your intended local time to UTC before writing the expression, since GitHub Actions has no time zone field to compensate.

    Compatibility notes

    Compatibility note

    GitHub Actions schedules always evaluate in UTC — there is no per-workflow time zone setting, so an expression tuned for a local time zone on a traditional cron daemon will fire at a different wall-clock time on GitHub.

    Compatibility note

    GitHub explicitly documents that scheduled workflows can be delayed during periods of high load on shared runners, and that very frequent schedules (as often as every minute) are discouraged and may be silently disabled on repositories with low activity — treat sub-5-minute intervals as a best-effort request, not a guarantee, unlike a dedicated cron daemon.

    Compatibility note

    The field syntax itself is identical to standard 5-field Unix cron, so no field-count or day-of-week renumbering is needed — this page is a compatibility check, not a translation, and the "output" expression is always identical to the input.

    References

    • crontab(5) — POSIX cron expression format (man7.org) — checked 2026-07-29
    • GitHub Docs — Events that trigger workflows (schedule) — checked 2026-07-29

    Last verified 2026-07-29.