How long doesMilklast?

The USDA rates 5 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 5 separate entries under this name — plain or flavored, canned evaporated or condensed, lactose-free, shelf-stable and ultra-pasteurized — and they do not keep for the same time: Milk, lactose-free holds 1 week outside the freezer, Milk, shelf-stable holds 6 months to 12 months.

The shortest of these, Milk, canned evaporated or condensed at 5 days, is a safety limit, and past it the food goes out untasted.

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 plain, flavored, flavor and can.

Milk, plain or flavored

• In the freezer3 months
• In the fridgePackage use-by date

Milk, canned evaporated or condensed

• Unopened · in the pantry12 months
• Once opened · in the fridge4 days to 5 days

Milk, lactose-free

• In the freezernot recommended
• Once opened · in the fridge1 week

Milk, shelf-stable

• Unopened · in the pantry6 months to 12 months
• Once opened · in the fridge5 days to 7 days

Milk, ultra-pasteurized

• In the fridge1 month to 3 months
• Once opened · in the fridge7 days to 10 days

Where the USDA answers in words instead of days

1 of the nine slots the USDA keeps for this item holds an answer that is not a number, and an answer in words is still an answer: in the fridge it answers with the package date rather than a number, and the use-by date printed on that particular package is the figure to go by.

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 8 rows across the 5 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Milk, plain or flavored

• In the freezerUse by3 months after the day you bought it

Milk, canned evaporated or condensed

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by12 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by4 days to 5 days after the day you opened it

Milk, lactose-free

• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by1 week after the day you opened it

Milk, shelf-stable

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by6 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by5 days to 7 days after the day you opened it

Milk, ultra-pasteurized

• In the fridgeUse by1 month to 3 months after the day you stored it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by7 days to 10 days after the day you opened it

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the shortest window under this name — Milk, canned evaporated or condensed at 4 days to 5 days in the fridge once opened — 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: Milk, canned evaporated or condensed 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 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.

Items that behave the same way

Milk, plain or flavored 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 days in the fridge
• Egg substituteskeeps 3 days in the fridge
• Eggnog, commercialkeeps 3 days sealed in the fridge
• Kefir, fermented milkkeeps 1 day in the fridge once openedup to 1 week sealed in the fridge
• Soy milkkeeps 7 days in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

No other product in the file is rated in exactly this set of places: freezer from the day of purchase, pantry from the day of purchase, refrigerator and refrigerator after opening, and nothing else. That makes the shape of this record unique among the 466 products here, so the closest comparisons available are the entries that share most of it — Egg substitutes, Nacho cheese and Coconut milk. Their windows are printed beside them below, and none of them is rated in quite the same way.

Nothing carries this exact set of places, so these share most of it.

• Egg substitutes3 days in the fridge
• Nacho cheese2 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Coconut milk7 days in the fridge once opened
• Butter1 month sealed in the fridge
• Buttermilk1 week sealed in the fridge
• Coffee creamer3 weeks sealed in the fridgeliquid refrigerated
• Cottage cheese1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Eggnog3 days sealed in the fridge

The record this page is built from

This name is one of the crowded ones in the file: 5 rows carry it, starting at record 27, out of 661 rows in the snapshot altogether. All 5 are printed on this page as separate kinds, because a page that merged their windows into one figure would be publishing a number the USDA never did. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Milk, plain or flavored, 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.

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.

USDA index terms: aseptic packaging, can, canned, condense, condensed, evaporate, evaporated, flavor, flavored, lactose, lactose-free, pasteurized, plain, shelf, shelf stable milk, stable, UHT, ultra, ultra pasteurized milk, ultrapasteurized

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.