How to Run a Job on a Schedule Only on Weekdays in GitHub Actions

A nightly job that fires every day wastes runs on weekends; the cron day-of-week field can limit it to working days.

Set the cron day-of-week field to 1-5 in on: schedule so the job runs Monday through Friday only.

Steps

• Add on: schedule with a cron expression.
• Set the fifth field, day of week, to 1-5 for Monday through Friday.
• Remember cron runs in UTC, so adjust the hour for your timezone.
• Keep the workflow on the default branch so the schedule registers.

Workflow

name: Weekday Job
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 6 * * 1-5'
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: echo "runs 06:00 UTC Mon-Fri"

Notes

• Scheduled runs always use UTC, so a 6am local job needs the hour offset by your timezone.
• Latchkey managed runners run these scheduled jobs cheaper and self-heal on runner loss.

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