KeepsUntilSearch My fridgeDairy Products & Eggs · USDA FoodKeeper

How long does Milk last in the fridge once opened?

5 kinds · each with its own window

Milk, ultra-pasteurized · Once opened · in the fridge

Use by7 days to 10 days

Counted from the day you opened 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

Milk (ultra-pasteurized) keeps 7–10 days in the fridge once opened. 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

Milk, ultra-pasteurized · In the fridge

1 month to 3 months

Counted from the day you stored it

9×

Milk, ultra-pasteurized · What opening the package costs90 days in the fridge ÷ 10 days open in the fridge

The USDA rates 5 kinds of this separately

Milk, canned evaporated or condensed keeps 4 days, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. 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.

What opening the package actually costs

Opening the package is the decision that settles this page. Sealed, the item holds 3 months in the fridge; once open it holds 10 days open in the fridge, the same food measured in days instead of months, a drop of 9 times. On the same shelf it sits 8 of 31, between Vegan Cheddar Cheese at 4 months and Butter at 2 months. Plain, flavored and flavor 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 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

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

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.

Can you freeze milk?

Some kinds, yes. The USDA gives milk (plain or flavored) 3 months in the freezer from the day you buy it; held at 0 °F food stays safe beyond that. For milk (ultra-pasteurized), the kind this page answers for, it gives no freezer figure. Dairy can separate or turn grainy once thawed, so frozen it is better cooked with than eaten as it was.

How to tell if milk has gone bad

Go by the date first: milk keeps 7–10 days in the fridge once opened. Sour or off smell, lumps in milk or cream, and mold mean it goes out. On hard cheese, cut away 1 inch around a moldy spot; soft cheese with mold goes out whole.

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 once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Milk, ultra-pasteurized 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.

The figures in the freezer, in the pantry and in the fridge 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 Milk, ultra-pasteurized past its 7 days to 10 days in the fridge once opened 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. 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

The 6 items below are the closest match to Milk, ultra-pasteurized by storage behavior, running 4 weeks to 5 months and bracketing its 3 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.

Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Milk, ultra-pasteurized, 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.

Also searched as: whole milk, 2% milk, skim milk

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.