How long do Dates last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Dates keep 12 months in the fridge from purchase. Counting 12 months forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.
- In the freezerUse by1 year to 2 years after the day you stored it
- From purchase · in the pantryUse by2 months after the day you bought it
- From purchase · in the fridgeUse by12 months after the day you bought it
Freezing changes the unit, not just the number
Freezing moves this item onto a different calendar. 12 months in the refrigerator becomes 2 years in the freezer, 2 times longer, and the point at which you stop counting in months and start counting in years. On the same shelf it sits 2 of 89, between Coconut, shredded at 1 year and Kimchi at 12 months.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage. Within Produce it is filed under Fresh Fruits.
- In the freezer1 year to 2 years
- From purchase · in the pantry2 months
- From purchase · in the fridge12 months
Can you freeze dates?
Yes. The USDA gives dates 1–2 years in the freezer, and held at 0 °F food stays safe beyond that: the figure is about quality. Most produce goes soft when thawed, so frozen it suits cooking, smoothies and sauces rather than eating raw.
How to tell if dates have gone bad
Go by the date first: dates keep 12 months 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 12 months in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Dates 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 Dates past its 12 months 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 Dates in one state and they disagree: 12 months in the fridge against 2 months 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
The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 3 months to 1 year and bracketing its 12 months.
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.
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.