Cron Jobs on Vercel

Cron jobs (a.k.a. scheduled jobs) are just HTTP GET requests that Vercel sends to a specific endpoint in the project at recurring times.

Step 1 – vercel.json setup:
This config file is used to override default behavior and define cron schedules.

{
"crons": [
         {
          "path": "/api/feedback",
          "schedule": "0 15 * * 0"
         }
         ]
}

This will trigger a GET request to /api/feedback every Sunday at 15:00 UTC.

To verify schedule strings: https://crontab.guru

Note: Vercel adds the user agent vercel-cron/1.0 to these requests.

Step 2 – Secure the endpoint using CRON_SECRET:
Vercel looks for a CRON_SECRET env variable. All cron jobs in the same project share it.

To generate one, use 1Password or another generator: https://1password.com/password-generator (should be 16+ characters)

Example implementation:

import type { NextRequest } from 'next/server';
export function GET(request: NextRequest) {
const authHeader = request.headers.get('authorization');
if (authHeader !== `Bearer ${process.env.CRON_SECRET}`) {
return new Response('Unauthorized', { status: 401 });
}
// logic here
return Response.json({ success: true });
}

Can test locally using Postman with an Authorization header to make sure it's wired up before deploying.