 <p>In case someone is wondering what the complete solution looks like, here it is:</p> <pre><code>&lt;?php /** * in my case, the script was put in a subfolder of the project-root, called 'cron' * make sure you adjust this according to where you put it. */ chdir(dirname(__DIR__)); // Setup autoloading require 'init_autoloader.php'; Zend\Mvc\Application::init(require 'config/application.config.php'); /** * your code goes here */ echo date("d-m-Y H:i:s").": cron finished"; </code></pre>