How long does Cream last?
- Whipped, sweetened1 day
- Half and half3 days to 4 days
- Light1 week
- Heavy10 days
- Whipping, ultrapasteurized1 month
Turning the range into a date
Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 10 rows across the 5 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Cream, whipping, ultrapasteurized
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 month after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by1 week after the day you opened it
Cream, whipped, sweetened
- In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by1 day after the day you stored it
Cream, half and half
- In the freezerUse by4 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 4 days after the day you bought it
Cream, heavy
- In the freezerUse by3 months to 4 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by10 days after the day you bought it
Cream, light
- In the freezerUse by3 months to 4 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 week after the day you bought it
The USDA rates 5 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 5 separate entries under this name — whipping, ultrapasteurized, whipped, sweetened, half and half, heavy and light — and they do not keep for the same time: Cream, whipped, sweetened holds 1 day outside the freezer, Cream, whipping, ultrapasteurized holds 1 month.
The shortest of these, Cream, whipped, sweetened at 1 day, is a safety limit, and past it the food goes out untasted.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA rates this item cold or frozen and never at room temperature: no pantry figure exists for it, as for 222 of the 466 foods in the data that get no pantry time at all. The source also indexes it as whipping, ultrapasteurized, whipped and sweetened.
Cream, whipping, ultrapasteurized
- In the freezernot recommended
- Unopened · in the fridge1 month
- Once opened · in the fridge1 week
Cream, whipped, sweetened
- In the freezer1 month to 2 months
- In the fridge1 day
Cream, half and half
- In the freezer4 months
- Unopened · in the fridge3 days to 4 days
Cream, heavy
- In the freezer3 months to 4 months
- Unopened · in the fridge10 days
Cream, light
- In the freezer3 months to 4 months
- Unopened · in the fridge1 week
What the USDA adds in words
The USDA attaches 1 handling note to this item, reproduced below word for word. It is not a storage time: it qualifies the figure above rather than replacing it. 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.
Cream, light, in the freezer. Use for cooking.
Can you freeze cream?
Some kinds, yes. The USDA gives cream (whipped, sweetened) 1–2 months in the freezer; held at 0 °F food stays safe beyond that. For cream (whipping, ultrapasteurized) it advises against freezing. Dairy can separate or turn grainy once thawed, so frozen it is better cooked with than eaten as it was.
How to tell if cream has gone bad
Go by the windows listed above first. Sour or off smell, lumps in milk or cream, and mold mean it goes out. On hard cheese, cut away 1 inch around a moldy spot; soft cheese with mold goes out whole. Keep it at 40 °F or below, at the back of the fridge.
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.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the shortest window under this name — Cream, whipped, sweetened at 1 day in the fridge — has run out, or the container sat out on the counter overnight. Throw the container out without tasting it, and count any hours it already spent out of the refrigerator as part of that window rather than on top of it.
What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Cream, whipped, sweetened is an animal food, or made with one. The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. Freezing stops the clock but does not turn it back: food already past its window is not rescued by putting it in the freezer. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Items that behave the same way
Cream carries no single window to compare — its 5 kinds each keep their own — so these 6 are simply what the USDA rates on the same shelf, shortest first: Pudding at 2 days through Soy milk at 10 days.
- Puddingkeeps 2 days in the fridge once opened
- Egg disheskeeps 3–4 days in the fridge
- Egg substituteskeeps 12 months in the freezer
- Eggnog, commercialkeeps 3–5 days sealed in the fridge
- Kefir, fermented milkkeeps 1–2 days in the fridge once openedup to 1 week sealed in the fridge
- Soy milkkeeps 7–10 days in the fridge once opened
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.
No one of the 5 is the kind the plain name means, so this page prints no single figure: the kinds are listed with their own windows and you pick yours.
USDA index terms: half, heavy, light, sweetened, ultrapasteurized, whipped, whipping
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.