How long does Basil last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Basil (fresh) keeps 10 days in the fridge. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 3 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Basil, dried
- In the pantryUse by12 months after the day you stored it
Basil, fresh
- In the pantryUse by5 days after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by10 days after the day you stored it
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — dried and fresh — and they do not keep for the same time: Basil, fresh holds 10 days outside the freezer, Basil, dried holds 12 months. 0 of the 2 carry a freezer figure.
A short window, and what shortens it further
Basil, fresh is one of the short-lived entries in the data: 10 days outside the freezer, position 45 of 89 in the Produce list. At that scale a day of delay is a large share of the whole window, which is why the figure is printed as a range rather than an average. On the same shelf it sits 45 of 89, between Swiss chard at 2 weeks and Bean sprouts at 10 days.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as dried and fresh.
Basil, dried
- In the pantry12 months
Basil, fresh
- In the pantry5 days
- In the fridge10 days
What the USDA adds in words
The USDA attaches 2 handling notes to this item, reproduced below word for word. None of them is a storage time: they qualify the figures above rather than replacing them. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.
Basil, fresh, in the refrigerator. Will start to discolor.
Basil, fresh, in the pantry. Keep stems in water.
Can you freeze basil?
The USDA prints no freezer time for basil. Frozen at 0 °F any food stays safe; whether it is still good after thawing is a matter of quality. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.
How to tell if basil has gone bad
Go by the date first: basil keeps 10 days in the fridge. Mold, slime, a sour smell or soft dark spots mean it goes out; firm produce can be saved by cutting 1 inch around a small moldy spot, soft produce cannot. Refrigerate cut or peeled produce within 2 hours.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety USDA FSIS: molds on food FDA: are you storing food safely FoodSafety.gov: the FoodKeeper app.
Is it still safe to eat, or just past its best?
The answer at the top of this page reads 10 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Basil, fresh is raw and whole. Past it, whether it has gone bad is yours to judge by look and smell: this window rates quality, not the day it turns hazardous.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Basil, fresh past its 10 days in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Two places, and one of them is the wrong one
The USDA rates two places for Basil, fresh in one state and they disagree: 10 days in the fridge against 5 days in the pantry. This page answers with the refrigerator, the longer of the two. Both figures are the USDA's own, so this is a choice of where to put the food rather than a disagreement about how long it keeps.
Items that behave the same way
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 1 week to 10 days against the 10 days of Basil, fresh, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
Where these numbers come from
Every storage time on this page is the USDA’s own published figure from the FoodKeeper data, one of the 9 it keeps per food, reproduced unchanged and never an estimate of ours. Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, each kind keeps its own windows, and the page names the kind its answer is for. The dates and multipliers are ours, computed from those ranges.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page. How the site is built is on the method page.
Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Basil, fresh, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in.
USDA index terms: dried, fresh
KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.