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How long does Peanut butter last in the pantry once opened?

3 kinds · each with its own window
Peanut butter, commercial · Once opened · in the pantry
Use by2 months to 3 months
Counted from the day you opened it
Quality window · past it, judge it yourself
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 testWhere these numbers come fromThe USDA source, the parse rules and what this site cannot tell youEvery food on the siteOne page, every product, longest first

Turning the range into a date

Peanut butter (commercial) keeps 2–3 months in the pantry once opened. 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
Peanut butter, commercial · Unopened · in the pantry
6 months to 24 months
Counted from the day you bought it
8×
Peanut butter, commercial · What opening the package costs720 days sealed in the pantry ÷ 90 days open in the pantry

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. Opening the package costs 8 times: 24 months sealed in the pantry, 3 months open in the pantry.

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

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.

Can you freeze peanut butter?

The USDA prints no freezer time for peanut butter. Frozen at 0 °F any food stays safe; whether it is 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 peanut butter has gone bad

Go by the date first: peanut butter keeps 2–3 months in the pantry once opened. Insects, a musty or rancid smell, clumping from damp, or a swollen can mean it goes out. Any dish you cook with it follows the 2-hour rule, 1 hour above 90 °F.

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 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, whether it has gone bad is yours to judge by look and smell: this window rates quality, not the day it turns hazardous.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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