Quartz cron expression syntax

A Quartz cron expression uses 7 fields — seconds minutes hours day-of-month month day-of-week year — and is the cron flavor used by the Quartz Java scheduler, Spring Framework’s @Scheduled annotation, and any JVM application that depends on quartz-scheduler. It is NOT the same as Unix cron (5 fields, no seconds) or AWS EventBridge cron (6 fields, no seconds, with year).

Quick reference

How does Quartz cron differ from Unix cron?

Three structural differences.

Seconds field at the front. Unix cron has no seconds — minute is the smallest unit. Quartz adds a leading seconds field, so the same “every 5 minutes” expression that’s */5 * * * * in Unix becomes 0 */5 * * * ? in Quartz: a literal 0 in seconds, then */5 in minutes, then ? in dow because dom is *.

The ? rule. Quartz forbids both day-of-month and day-of-week being concrete values (or both being *) at the same time. Exactly one of them must be ? (“no specific value”). This is because the two day fields can conflict — “the 5th of the month AND a Monday” rarely intersects, and Quartz wants you to be explicit about which day type matters. Unix cron treats dom-and-dow as logical OR; Quartz makes you pick.

Day-of-week numbering. Quartz uses 1–7 starting Sunday (Sun=1, Mon=2, …, Sat=7), inheriting Java’s Calendar.SUNDAY constant. Unix Vixie cron uses 0–6 starting Sunday. So 0 0 0 ? * 2 in Quartz means “midnight every Monday”; the same 0 0 0 * * 1 in Unix also means “midnight every Monday” — different number for the same day. Use named days (SUN, MON, …) whenever you can.

Special operators (Quartz adds three over Unix)

These operators don’t exist in standard Unix cron. AWS EventBridge inherited L, W and # from Quartz; Vixie cron does not.

Variations

How do I use a Quartz cron expression?

Spring Framework @Scheduled:

@Component
public class WeeklyDigestJob {

  // 9 AM every Monday — Quartz syntax
  @Scheduled(cron = "0 0 9 ? * MON", zone = "America/New_York")
  public void sendDigest() {
    // ...
  }
}

The zone parameter on @Scheduled is critical — without it, Spring uses the JVM default timezone, which on most container deployments is UTC.

Standalone Quartz Scheduler (Java):

JobDetail job = JobBuilder.newJob(WeeklyDigest.class)
  .withIdentity("weeklyDigest")
  .build();

CronTrigger trigger = TriggerBuilder.newTrigger()
  .withIdentity("mondayMorning")
  .withSchedule(CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 9 ? * MON")
    .inTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/New_York")))
  .build();

scheduler.scheduleJob(job, trigger);

Quartz.NET (.NET equivalent):

await scheduler.ScheduleJob(job,
  TriggerBuilder.Create()
    .WithCronSchedule("0 0 9 ? * MON",
      x => x.InTimeZone(TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Eastern Standard Time")))
    .Build());

Common mistakes

Pasting a Unix cron expression into Spring @Scheduled. Spring expects 6-field Quartz syntax (the year is optional, but seconds is required). A Unix */5 * * * * is parsed as a 5-field expression in Spring’s parser and rejected. Add the seconds field: 0 */5 * * * * or 0 */5 * * * ? — the ? form is safer because it follows the Quartz rule.

Both dom and dow as *. Quartz throws ParseException: Support for specifying both a day-of-week AND a day-of-month parameter is not implemented. One of them must be ?. Pick ? for dow when you care about month-day; pick ? for dom when you care about week-day.

Treating Quartz numbers as Unix numbers. 0 0 9 ? * 1 in Quartz means Sunday 9 AM (Sun=1 in Quartz). The same expression in Unix doesn’t even parse (5 vs 7 fields), but if you mentally translate field-by-field you’d think “Monday” — wrong. Use named days to dodge this entirely.

Using 0 in the dow field. Quartz day-of-week is 1–7. 0 is rejected as out of range. The historical “Sunday=0” convention is Unix-only.

Pasting a Quartz expression into AWS EventBridge. AWS uses 6 fields, not 7 — drop the seconds field. The dow numbering matches Quartz (1–7 starting Sunday) and the special operators (L, W, #) work, so the rest usually ports cleanly.

For Unix cron schedules see common cron schedules, or build a standard expression with the Cron Expression Builder.