How long do Olives last in the fridge once opened?
Turning the range into a date
Olives (black and green) keep 2 weeks in the fridge once opened. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 3 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Olives, from olive bar
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by2 weeks after the day you bought it
Olives, black and green
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by12 months to 18 months after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 weeks after the day you opened it
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — from olive bar and black and green — and they do not keep for the same time: Olives, from olive bar holds 2 weeks outside the freezer, Olives, black and green holds 12 months to 18 months.
Why the freezer is not an option here
The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for every one of the 2 kinds under this name, and for Olives, black and green the whole answer is 2 weeks in the refrigerator after opening. 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.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as bar, black and green.
Olives, from olive bar
- In the freezernot recommended
- Unopened · in the fridge2 weeks
Olives, black and green
- Unopened · in the pantry12 months to 18 months
- Once opened · in the fridge2 weeks
Can you freeze olives?
The USDA prints no freezer time for olives. Frozen at 0 °F any food stays safe; whether they are still good after thawing is a matter of quality. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.
How to tell if olives have gone bad
Go by the date first: olives keep 2 weeks in the fridge once opened. A bulging, leaking or badly dented can, or a jar whose lid has popped, goes out unopened; so does mold or fizzing in an opened one. Once opened, keep it in the fridge at 40 °F or below.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety 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 2 weeks in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food: the source files Olives, black and green under Deli & Prepared Foods, a heading it keeps for perishable food. 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 figure in the pantry here is 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 Olives, black and green past its 2 weeks 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. 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, 6 days to 3 months against the 18 months of Olives, black and green, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
- Hummuskeeps 7 days in the fridge once openedcommercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) · up to 3 months sealed in the fridge
- Canadian baconkeeps 10 days in the fridgesliced · up to 80 days sealed in the fridge
- Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners, with USDA sealkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Luncheon meat or poultrykeeps 3–5 days in the fridge once openedpre-packaged · up to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Salami, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meatkeeps 3–5 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Cooked ricekeeps 4–6 days in the fridge
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 Olives, black and green, 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: bar, black, green, olive
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.