How long do Herbs last in the fridge?

Turning the range into a date

Herbs keep 7–10 days in the fridge from purchase. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Herbs, dried

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by1 year to 2 years after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by1 year to 2 years after the day you opened it

Herbs

• In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you bought it
• From purchase · in the fridgeUse by7 days to 10 days after the day you bought it

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — dried and USDA record 288 — and they do not keep for the same time: Herbs holds 7 days to 10 days outside the freezer, Herbs, dried holds 1 year to 2 years.

Freezing changes the unit, not just the number

Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 10 days in the sealed fridge becomes 2 months in the freezer: 6 times longer, and days turning into months. On the same shelf it sits 40 of 52, between Commercial cakes and muffins at 10 days and Cheesecake at 7 days. Dried and herb are the same food in the source list.

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. The source also indexes it as dried.

Herbs, dried

• Unopened · in the pantry1 year to 2 years
• Once opened · in the pantry1 year to 2 years

Herbs

• In the freezer1 month to 2 months
• From purchase · in the fridge7 days to 10 days

Can you freeze herbs?

Yes. The USDA gives herbs 1–2 months in the freezer from the day you buy them, 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 herbs have gone bad

Go by the date first: herbs keep 7–10 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 7 days to 10 days in the fridge. Nothing here names the food: neither Herbs nor the heading it sits under says whether it spoils dangerously or keeps itself. Past it, take the shorter of the two answers: we would rather print that the record does not settle it than pick one for you.

The figures in the pantry, in the pantry once opened and in the freezer here are a quality window. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Herbs past its 7 days to 10 days in the fridge window. Nothing here settles whether that date is a limit or a matter of taste. If the food is moist, low in acid and ready to eat — a sauce, a drink, a filling — treat the date as a limit and throw it out untasted; otherwise look and smell, and out it goes if either is off.

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

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 4 days to 10 days against the 10 days of Herbs, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Commercial cakes and muffinskeeps exactly as long
• Cheesecakekeeps 5–7 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit pies, apple, peach, blueberry, apricot, cherry, blackberrykeeps 1–2 days in the pantryup to 1 week in the fridge once opened
• Muffinkeeps 3–7 days in the pantrycommercially packaged
• Quichekeeps 3–5 days in the fridge once opened
• Cream pies, banana cream, coconut cream, butterscotchkeeps 3–4 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.

Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Herbs, 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, herb

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.