How long doesPeanut butterlast in the pantry once opened?

The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — commercial, commercially produced, containing hydrogenated fat or other stabilizers and natural — and they do not keep for the same time: Peanut butter, commercially produced, containing hydrogenated fat or other stabilizers holds 12 months outside the freezer, Peanut butter, commercial holds 6 months to 24 months.

How vague the source is about this one

The source is unusually unsure about this one. Its widest range, the pantry from the day of purchase, runs from 6 months to 24 months, a factor of four between the cautious end and the optimistic one, on a figure most people read as a single number.

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 commercial, hydrogenated fat, fat and stabilizers.

Peanut butter, commercial

• Unopened · in the pantry6 months to 24 months
• Once opened · in the pantry2 months to 3 months

Peanut butter, commercially produced, containing hydrogenated fat or other stabilizers

• Unopened · in the pantry6 months to 9 months
• Once opened · in the pantry2 months to 3 months
• Unopened · in the fridge12 months
• Once opened · in the fridge3 months to 4 months

Peanut butter, natural

• Unopened · in the fridge12 months
• Once opened · in the fridge3 months to 4 months

What the USDA adds in words

The USDA attaches 1 handling note to this item, reproduced below word for word. It is not a storage time: it qualifies the figure above rather than replacing it. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.

Peanut butter, natural, in the refrigerator, from the day you bought it. Or package use-by date, whichever comes first.

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 8 rows across the 3 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Peanut butter, commercial

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by6 months to 24 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by2 months to 3 months after the day you opened it

Peanut butter, commercially produced, containing hydrogenated fat or other stabilizers

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by6 months to 9 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by2 months to 3 months after the day you opened it
• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by12 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 months to 4 months after the day you opened it

Peanut butter, natural

• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by12 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 months to 4 months after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 2 months to 3 months in the pantry once opened. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Peanut butter, commercial keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Peanut butter, commercial past its 2 months to 3 months in the pantry once opened window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. A rancid, paint-like smell in a nut, an oil or a seed, mold around the neck of a bottle, or a swollen can mean it goes out whatever the date says.

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.

Two places, and one of them is the wrong one

The USDA rates two places for it in one state and they disagree: 12 months in the fridge against 6 months to 9 months in the pantry. Of the two, the refrigerator is the longer. Both figures are the USDA's own, so this is a choice of where to put the food rather than a disagreement about how long it keeps.

Is that a long time?

Among the 70 items the USDA files under Shelf Stable Foods, Peanut butter, commercial ranks 22 by how long it keeps outside the freezer. Avocado Oil holds 2 years, Applesauce holds 18 months. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 68% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items nearest it sit inside a band of 2 years to 2 years — a tight cluster, and Peanut butter, commercial at 24 months is inside it.

• Chocolate syrupkeeps 6 months in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Popcornkeeps 1 year in the pantry once openeddry kernels in jar · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Black pepperkeeps 2 years sealed in the pantryground, dried, commercially bottled or…
• Cajun seasoning blend, ground, dried, commercially bottled or purchased in bulkkeeps 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Flaxseedkeeps 2 years sealed in the pantrywhole seed
• Almond oilkeeps 2 years sealed in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

No other product in the file is rated in exactly this set of places: pantry from the day of purchase, pantry after opening, refrigerator from the day of purchase 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 — Nuts, Sun dried tomatoes and Peanuts. 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.

• Nuts2 months in the pantry once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Sun dried tomatoes3 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Peanuts12 months sealed in the fridgeno shell
• Sunflower seeds7 months in the fridge once openedroasted, no shell · up to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Crackers3 months in the fridge once openedup to 8 months sealed in the pantry
• Fruits, dried6 months in the fridge once opened
• Chocolate syrup6 months in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Molasses6 months in the pantry once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Shelf Stable Foods shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Shelf Stable Foods shelf together with 69 others, and 21 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Coconut cream at 5 years down to Polenta at 7 days. Nearest this product by window are Chocolate syrup, Molasses and Popcorn, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Shelf Stable Foods the same product ranks 22 of 70. The middle of the shelf is Grapeseed oil, at 1 year. 5 products on this shelf publish no window outside the freezer and stay out of the order.

• Chocolate syrup2 years6 months in the fridge once opened
• Molasses2 years6 months in the pantry once opened
• Popcorn2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
• Black pepper2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
• Cajun seasoning blend2 years1 year sealed in the pantry
• Flaxseed2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
• Almond oil2 years2 years sealed in the fridge
• "Genuine" Maple syrup2 years2 years in the pantry

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 24 months, the Shelf Stable Foods aisle gives 7 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Cinnamon at 4 years against this one's 24 months; after it come Cumin, Garlic powder and Onion powder. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 33 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Cereal and Toaster pastries among them. The largest step the category offers is Sesame seeds at 5 years.

• Cinnamon4 years3 years sealed in the pantry
• Cumin4 years3 years sealed in the pantry
• Garlic powder4 years3 years sealed in the pantry
• Onion powder4 years3 years sealed in the pantry
• Nutmeg4 years3 years sealed in the pantry
• Coconut cream5 years4 days in the fridge once opened
• Sesame seeds5 years5 years in the pantry

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 3 separate rows under this name — records 387, 488 and 489 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 4 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Peanut butter, commercial, 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. The record carries 1 handling note, quoted on this page word for word.

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: butter, commercial, commercial peanut butter, fat, hydrogenated fat, natural, peanut, stabilizer, stabilizers

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.