Every 15 minutes during business hours

Why this pattern

Polling-style work — refreshing a cache, syncing a CRM, checking an external feed — typically only needs to run while users are likely to consume the result. */15 9-17 * * 1-5 fires at 00, 15, 30, 45 past each hour, from 09:00 through 17:00, Monday through Friday. That is 36 fires per workday, 180 per workweek.

Variations

• Every 10 minutes: */10 9-17 * * 1-5
• Every 30 minutes: */30 9-17 * * 1-5
• Extended window 7-19: */15 7-19 * * 1-5

Platform notes

GitHub Actions caps minimum interval at 5 minutes — anything tighter is silently rounded up. Kubernetes CronJob handles frequent schedules reliably as long as concurrencyPolicy is set sensibly (typically Forbid for idempotent jobs or Replace for latest-wins flows). On AWS EventBridge, this pattern is fine; do not forget the ? rule when translating to the AWS 6-field form.