Laravel Task Scheduling — Cron with Artisan

Laravel's task scheduler provides an expressive way to define cron schedules in PHP:

// app/Console/Kernel.php
protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
    $schedule->command('reports:generate')->dailyAt('03:00');
    $schedule->command('cache:clear')->hourly();
    $schedule->command('emails:send')->everyFiveMinutes();
    $schedule->command('backup:run')->cron('0 0 * * 0');
}

Setup: Add a single cron entry to your server:

* * * * * cd /path-to-project && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Laravel runs its scheduler every minute and internally determines which tasks are due. This means you only need one crontab entry for all your Laravel scheduled tasks.

Common scheduling methods:

• ->everyMinute(), ->everyFiveMinutes(), ->hourly()
• ->dailyAt('13:00'), ->weeklyOn(1, '8:00')
• ->cron('*/10 * * * *') for custom expressions
• ->timezone('America/New_York') for timezone support