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

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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.

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.

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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.

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

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:

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"
  )
)

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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.

Examples:

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

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

Create an interval schedule that runs every 30 minutes:

prefect deployment schedule create my-deployment --interval 1800

Create a schedule with a specific timezone:

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

Replace all existing schedules with a new one:

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

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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.

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

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Create schedules with Terraform

You can manage schedules with the Terraform provider for Prefect.

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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:

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Schedule parameters in Python

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

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": "jim.halpert@dundermifflin.com"}
    ),
    Cron(
      "5 8 * * *",
      slug="dwight-email",
      parameters={
        "to": "dwight.schrute@dundermifflin.com",
        "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

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Schedule parameters in prefect.yaml

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

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