How long doDateslast in the fridge?
Freezing changes the unit, not just the number
Freezing moves this item onto a different calendar. 12 months in the sealed fridge becomes 2 years in the freezer, 2 times longer, and the point at which you stop counting in months and start counting in years.
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
- Unopened · in the pantry2 months
- Unopened · in the fridge12 months
Turning the range into a date
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
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by12 months after the day you bought it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
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, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.
Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.
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 FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. 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.
Is that a long time?
2 items in the Produce list keep exactly as long as this item, 12 months, so they all share place 2 of 89 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 92% of them.
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.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
10 other products are rated in exactly these places — freezer, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator from the day of purchase — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Tamarind, Pomegranate and Apples. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.
- Tamarind6 months sealed in the fridge
- Pomegranate1 month sealed in the fridge
- Apples4 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Baby carrots4 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Cantaloupe5 days sealed in the fridge
- Grapes1 week sealed in the fridge
- Papaya1 week sealed in the fridge
- Honeydew2 days sealed in the pantry
The rest of the Fresh Fruits shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Fresh Fruits shelf together with 29 others, and 1 of them keeps longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Coconut at 1 year down to Cherries at 3 days. Nearest this product by window are Coconut, Pomegranate and Cranberries, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Produce the same product ranks 2 of 89. The middle of the shelf is Papaya, at 1 week. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Fresh Fruits inside Produce.
- Coconut1 year8 months in the fridge once opened
- Pomegranate3 months1 month sealed in the fridge
- Cranberries2 months2 months sealed in the fridge
- Apples6 weeks4 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Citrus fruit21 days10 days sealed in the pantry
- Coconuts3 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Kumquats3 weeks3 weeks in the fridge
- Pitaya/dragon fruit3 weeks2 days in the pantry
If it has to keep longer than this
Nothing the USDA files under Produce keeps at least twice as long as this one outside the freezer. It runs the other way: 86 entries in the category keep half as long or less, among them Tamarind, Pumpkins and Jicama. So the question this page answers is not what to buy instead, but what this product outlasts on the same shelf, and by how much. Freezing this one instead would reach 2 years, which the comparison above leaves out on purpose. Twice as long is the cutoff used here, so a product a few days apart from this one is not treated as a step.
- Tamarind6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
- Pumpkins5 months3 months sealed in the fridge
- Jicama4 months4 months sealed in the pantry
- Pomegranate3 months1 month sealed in the fridge
- Cranberries2 months2 months sealed in the fridge
- Onions2 months2 months sealed in the fridge
- Potatoes2 months1 month sealed in the pantry
- Spaghetti squash2 months2 months in the pantry
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 260 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 3 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in months, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. It is filed under Fresh Fruits inside Produce, which is where every shelf comparison on this page comes from.
Where these numbers come from
Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.
Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.
Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked 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.