How to create schedules

There are several ways to create a schedule for a deployment:

Through the Prefect UI
With the cron, interval, or rrule parameters if building your deployment with the serve method of the Flow object or the serve utility for managing multiple flows simultaneously
If using worker-based deployments
- When you define a deployment with flow.serve or flow.deploy
- Through the interactive prefect deploy command
- With the deployments -> schedules section of the prefect.yaml file

Create schedules in the UI

You can add schedules in the Schedules section of a Deployment page in the UI. To add a schedule select the + Schedule button. Choose Interval or Cron to create a schedule.

<Note> **What about RRule?** The UI does not support creating RRule schedules. However, the UI will display RRule schedules that you've created through the command line. </Note>

The new schedule appears on the Deployment page where you created it. New scheduled flow runs are visible in the Upcoming tab of the Deployment page.

To edit an existing schedule, select Edit from the three-dot menu next to a schedule on a Deployment page.

Create schedules in Python

Specify the schedule when you create a deployment in a Python file with flow.serve(), serve, flow.deploy(), or deploy. Just add the keyword argument cron, interval, or rrule.

Argument	Description
`interval`	An interval on which to execute the deployment. Accepts a number or a timedelta object to create a single schedule. If a number is given, it is interpreted as seconds. Also accepts an iterable of numbers or timedelta to create multiple schedules.
`cron`	A cron schedule string of when to execute runs of this deployment. Also accepts an iterable of cron schedule strings to create multiple schedules.
`rrule`	An rrule schedule string of when to execute runs of this deployment. Also accepts an iterable of rrule schedule strings to create multiple schedules.
`schedules`	A list of schedule objects defining when to execute runs of this deployment. Used to define multiple schedules or additional scheduling options such as `timezone`.
`schedule`	A schedule object defining when to execute runs of this deployment. Used to define additional scheduling options such as `timezone`.
`slug`	An optional unique identifier for the schedule containing only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. If not provided for a given schedule, the schedule will be unnamed.

The serve method below will create a deployment of my_flow with a cron schedule that creates runs every minute of every day:

python

from prefect import flow

from myproject.flows import my_flow

my_flow.serve(name="flowing", cron="* * * * *")

If using deployments with dynamic infrastructure, the deploy method has the same schedule-based parameters.

When my_flow is served with this interval schedule, it will run every 10 minutes beginning at midnight on January, 1, 2026 in the America/Chicago timezone:

<CodeGroup> ```python prefect >= 3.1.16 from datetime import timedelta, datetime from prefect.schedules import Interval

from myproject.flows import my_flow

my_flow.serve( name="flowing", schedule=Interval( timedelta(minutes=10), anchor_date=datetime(2026, 1, 1, 0, 0), timezone="America/Chicago" ) )


```python prefect < 3.1.16
from datetime import timedelta, datetime
from prefect.client.schemas.schedules import IntervalSchedule

from myproject.flows import my_flow

my_flow.serve(
  name="flowing",
  schedules=[
    IntervalSchedule(
      interval=timedelta(minutes=10),
      anchor_date=datetime(2026, 1, 1, 0, 0),
      timezone="America/Chicago"
    )
  ]
)

</CodeGroup> <Tip> Keyword arguments for schedules are also accepted by the `to_deployment` method that converts a flow to a deployment. </Tip>

Create schedules with the CLI

You can create a schedule through the interactive prefect deploy command. You will be prompted to choose which type of schedule to create.

You can also create schedules for existing deployments using the prefect deployment schedule create command. This command allows you to specify schedule details directly without going through the interactive flow.

<Note> By default `prefect deployment schedule create` adds _additional_ schedules to your deployment. Use the `--replace` flag to remove old schedules and update with the new one. </Note>

Examples:

Create a cron schedule that runs every day at 9 AM:

bash

prefect deployment schedule create my-deployment --cron "0 9 * * *"

Create an interval schedule that runs every 30 minutes:

bash

prefect deployment schedule create my-deployment --interval 1800

Create a schedule with a specific timezone:

bash

prefect deployment schedule create my-deployment --cron "0 9 * * *" --timezone "America/New_York"

Replace all existing schedules with a new one:

bash

prefect deployment schedule create my-deployment --cron "0 9 * * *" --replace

Create schedules in YAML

If you save the prefect.yaml file from the prefect deploy command, you will see it has a schedules section for your deployment. Alternatively, you can create a prefect.yaml file from a recipe or from scratch and add a schedules section to it.

yaml

deployments:
  ...
  schedules:
    - cron: "0 0 * * *"
      slug: "chicago-schedule"
      timezone: "America/Chicago"
      active: false
    - cron: "0 12 * * *"
      slug: "new-york-schedule"
      timezone: "America/New_York"
      active: true
    - cron: "0 18 * * *"
      slug: "london-schedule"
      timezone: "Europe/London"
      active: true

Renaming schedule slugs

If you need to rename a schedule's slug, use the replaces field to indicate which existing schedule should be updated:

yaml

deployments:
  - name: send-emails
    entrypoint: flows.py:send_email
    schedules:
      - cron: "0 8 * * *"
        slug: "daily-team-digest"    # The new slug
        replaces: "morning-emails"   # The old slug being replaced
        parameters:
          to: "[email protected]"

When you run prefect deploy:

The existing schedule with slug "morning-emails" will be updated
Its slug will change to "daily-team-digest"
No new schedule is created, and no orphaned schedule remains

After a successful deploy, you can remove the replaces field from your YAML - it becomes a no-op once the old slug no longer exists.

<Note> If `replaces` points to a slug that doesn't exist, the schedule will be created normally and a warning will be logged. </Note> <Warning> Two schedules cannot have `replaces` pointing to the same slug. This will result in a validation error. </Warning>

Create schedules with Terraform

import { TF } from "/snippets/resource-management/terraform.mdx" import { deployments } from "/snippets/resource-management/vars.mdx"

Associate parameters with schedules

Using any of the above methods to create a schedule, you can bind parameters to your schedules.

For example, say you have a flow that sends an email. Every day at 8:00 AM you want to send a message to one recipient, and at 8:05 AM you want to send a different message to another recipient.

Instead of creating independent deployments with different default parameters and schedules, you can bind parameters to the schedules themselves:

Schedule parameters in Python

Whether using .serve or .deploy, you can pass parameters to your deployment schedules:

python

from prefect import flow
from prefect.schedules import Cron

@flow
def send_email(to: str, message: str = "Stop goofing off!"):
    print(f"Sending email to {to} with message: {message}")

send_email.serve(
  name="my-flow",
  schedules=[
    Cron(
      "0 8 * * *",
      slug="jim-email",
      parameters={"to": "[email protected]"}
    ),
    Cron(
      "5 8 * * *",
      slug="dwight-email",
      parameters={
        "to": "[email protected]",
        "message": "Stop goofing off! You're assistant _to_ the regional manager!"
      }
    )
  ]
)

Note that our flow has a default message parameter, but we've overridden it for the second schedule.

This deployment will schedule runs that:

Send "Stop goofing off!" to Jim at 8:00 AM every day
Send "Stop goofing off! You're assistant to the regional manager!" to Dwight at 8:05 AM every day

<Tip> Use the same pattern to bind parameters to any schedule type in `prefect.schedules`. You can provide one schedule via the `schedule` kwarg or multiple schedules via `schedules`. </Tip>

Schedule parameters in `prefect.yaml`

You can also provide parameters to schedules in your prefect.yaml file.

yaml

deployments:
  name: send-email
  entrypoint: send_email_flow.py:send_email
  schedules:
    - cron: "0 8 * * *"
      slug: "jim-email"
      parameters:
        to: "[email protected]"
    - cron: "5 8 * * *"
      slug: "dwight-email"
      parameters:
        to: "[email protected]"
        message: "Stop goofing off! You're assistant _to_ the regional manager!"

Create schedules in the UI

Create schedules in Python

Create schedules with the CLI

Create schedules in YAML

Renaming schedule slugs

Create schedules with Terraform

Associate parameters with schedules

Schedule parameters in Python

Schedule parameters in prefect.yaml

See also

Schedule parameters in `prefect.yaml`