n8n Schedule Trigger: CRON Expressions, Timezones, and Advanced Scheduling Patterns (Free Workflow JSON)

Short summary

n8n's Schedule Trigger uses standard CRON expressions to schedule workflows with precise timezone awareness. This guide covers CRON field syntax (minute, hour, day, month, weekday), proper timezone handling with IANA names to avoid DST drift, combining Schedule Trigger with Wait nodes for rate limiting, and multi-schedule patterns. Includes 7+ working workflow JSON examples and critical best practices: always set timezone explicitly, use IANA names not fixed offsets, verify expressions at crontab.guru.

• •Master CRON syntax: 5 fields (minute, hour, day, month, weekday) with operators like *, -, /, and special characters (L for last day, # for nth weekday)
• •Handle timezones correctly: use IANA names (e.g., America/Chicago), not fixed offsets, to automatically adjust for DST twice yearly
• •Combine Schedule Trigger with Wait node for rate-limited API polling; verify any CRON expression at crontab.guru before saving

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