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How long do Fresh clams last in the fridge?

USDA FoodKeeper: Fresh clams, mussels, oysters

From purchase · in the fridge

Use by5 days to 10 days

Counted from the day you bought it

Safety limit · past it, throw it out

How this date is worked out

From KeepsUntilIt is past the dateWhat to do when the window has run out, and when tasting is not a test Where these numbers come fromThe USDA source, the parse rules and what this site cannot tell you Every food on the siteOne page, every product, longest first

Turning the range into a date

Fresh clams keep 5–10 days in the fridge from purchase. One row, one deadline: 10 days in the refrigerator from the day of purchase, counted from the day it went in rather than the day it was made.

From purchase · in the fridgeUse by5 days to 10 days after the day you bought it

Why the freezer is not an option here

The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for this item, so the whole answer is a single field: 5 days to 10 days in the refrigerator from the day of purchase. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer. Clam, mussel and oyster are the same food in the source list.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The refrigerator is the only place the USDA gives this item a storage time, as it does for 64 of the 466 foods the USDA lists. Within Seafood it is filed under Shellfish.

In the freezernot recommended
From purchase · in the fridge5 days to 10 days

Can you freeze fresh clams?

The USDA does not recommend freezing fresh clams. It is not a safety warning, since food held at 0 °F stays safe, but they come back changed. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.

From KeepsUntilWhere these numbers come fromThe USDA source, the parse rules and what this site cannot tell you

How to tell if fresh clams have gone bad

Go by the date first: fresh clams keep 5–10 days in the fridge. A sour, ammonia-like or strongly fishy smell, milky slime, or flesh that no longer springs back means it goes out. Cook fish until it reaches 145 °F and flakes with a fork.

Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety FDA: fresh and frozen seafood 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 5 days to 10 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Fresh clams, mussels, oysters is an animal food, or made with one. Past it, it is not safe to eat: throw it out without tasting, because bacteria build up while food still looks and smells fine.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Fresh clams, mussels, oysters past its 5 days to 10 days in the fridge window, 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.

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. 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

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 3 days to 10 days against the 10 days of this item, 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.

USDA index terms: clam, clams, Fresh clams, mussel, mussels, oyster, oysters

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.