Cron Jobs in Node.js: The Practical Guide Nobody Gave Me I spent 3 hours debugging why my cron job only ran once. Here's everything I wish I'd known before starting. Why This Matters Every serious application needs scheduled tasks: Send daily digest emails at 9 AM Clean up temp files every Sunday Generate reports on the 1st of each month Check API health every 5 minutes I've tried every approach. Here's what works, what doesn't, and what I use in production. Option 1: node-cron (Best for Most Cases) npm install node-cron Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode The gold standard for Node.js scheduling: const cron = require ( ' node-cron ' ); // Run every day at 9:00 AM cron . schedule ( ' 0 9 * * * ' , () => { console . log ( ' Sending daily digest... ' ); sendDailyDigest (); }); // Run every 5 minutes cron . schedule ( ' */5 * * * * ' , async () => { const status = await checkAPIHealth (); if ( ! status . ok ) alertAdmin ( status ); }); // Run on Mondays at 8:00 AM cron .…