• Prerequisites
• Add a pipeline schedule
• Edit a pipeline schedule
• Run manually
• Take ownership
• Related topics
• Troubleshooting
  • Short refs are expanded to full refs
  • Ambiguous refs
  • View and optimize pipeline schedules

Scheduled pipelines

Use scheduled pipelines to run GitLab CI/CD pipelines at regular intervals.

Prerequisites

For a scheduled pipeline to run:

• The schedule owner must have the Developer role. For pipelines on protected branches, the schedule owner must be allowed to merge to the branch.
• The .gitlab-ci.yml file must have valid syntax.

Otherwise, the pipeline is not created. No error message is displayed.

Add a pipeline schedule

To add a pipeline schedule:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Build > Pipeline schedules.
3. Select New schedule and fill in the form.
   • Interval Pattern: Select one of the preconfigured intervals, or enter a custom interval in cron notation. You can use any cron value, but scheduled pipelines cannot run more frequently than the instance’s maximum scheduled pipeline frequency.
   • Target branch or tag: Select the branch or tag for the pipeline.
   • Variables: Add any number of CI/CD variables to the schedule. These variables are available only when the scheduled pipeline runs, and not in any other pipeline run.

If the project already has the maximum number of pipeline schedules, you must delete unused schedules before you can add another.

Edit a pipeline schedule

The owner of a pipeline schedule can edit it:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Build > Pipeline schedules.
3. Next to the schedule, select Edit () and fill in the form.

The user must have the Developer role or above for the project. If the user is not the owner of the schedule, they must first take ownership of the schedule.

Run manually

To trigger a pipeline schedule manually, so that it runs immediately instead of the next scheduled time:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Build > Pipeline schedules.
3. On the right of the list, for the pipeline you want to run, select Run ().

You can manually run scheduled pipelines once per minute.

When you run a scheduled pipeline manually, the pipeline runs with the permissions of the user who triggered it, not the permissions of the schedule owner.

Take ownership

Scheduled pipelines execute with the permissions of the user who owns the schedule. The pipeline has access to the same resources as the pipeline owner, including protected environments and the CI/CD job token.

To take ownership of a pipeline created by a different user:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Build > Pipeline schedules.
3. On the right of the list, for the pipeline you want to become owner of, select Take ownership.

You need at least the Maintainer role to take ownership of a pipeline created by a different user.

Related topics

• Pipeline schedules API
• Run jobs for scheduled pipelines

Troubleshooting

When working with pipeline schedules, you might encounter the following issues.

Short refs are expanded to full refs

When you provide a short ref to the API, it is automatically expanded to a full ref. This behavior is intended and ensures explicit resource identification.

The API accepts both short refs (such as main) and full refs (such as refs/heads/main or refs/tags/main).

Ambiguous refs

In some cases, the API can’t automatically expand a short ref to a full ref. This can happen when:

• You provide a short ref (such as main), but both a branch and a tag exist with that name.
• You provide a short ref, but no branch or tag with that name exists.

To resolve this issue, provide the full ref to ensure the correct resource is identified.

View and optimize pipeline schedules

To prevent excessive load caused by too many pipelines starting simultaneously, you can review and optimize your pipeline schedules.

To get an overview of all existing schedules and identify opportunities to distribute them more evenly:

1. Run this command to extract and format schedule data:

   outfile=/tmp/gitlab_ci_schedules.tsv
   sudo gitlab-psql --command "
    COPY (SELECT
        ci_pipeline_schedules.cron,
        projects.path   AS project,
        users.email
    FROM ci_pipeline_schedules
    JOIN projects ON projects.id = ci_pipeline_schedules.project_id
    JOIN users    ON users.id    = ci_pipeline_schedules.owner_id
    ) TO '$outfile' CSV HEADER DELIMITER E'\t' ;"
   sort  "$outfile" | uniq -c | sort -n
   

2. Review the output to identify popular cron patterns. For example, you might see many schedules set to run at the start of each hour (0 * * * *).
3. Adjust the schedules to create a staggered cron pattern, especially for large repositories. For example, instead of multiple schedules running at the start of each hour, distribute them throughout the hour (5 * * * *, 15 * * * *, 25 * * * *).