How long does Tomato sauce last in the fridge once opened?
Turning the range into a date
Tomato sauce (spaghetti, pizza) keeps 3–5 days in the fridge once opened. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 2 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 5 days after the day you opened it
Tomato sauce, homemade, canned
- In the pantryUse by9 months to 12 months after the day you stored it
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — spaghetti, pizza and homemade, canned — and they do not keep for the same time: Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza holds 3 days to 5 days outside the freezer, Tomato sauce, homemade, canned holds 9 months to 12 months.
A short window, and what shortens it further
Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza is one of the short-lived entries in the data: 5 days outside the freezer, position 39 of 41 in the Condiments, Sauces & Canned Goods list. At that scale a day of delay is a large share of the whole window, which is why the figure is printed as a range rather than an average. Spaghetti, pizza and homemade tomato sauce are the same food in the source list.
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 spaghetti, pizza and homemade.
Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza
- In the pantryPackage use-by date
- Once opened · in the fridge3 days to 5 days
Tomato sauce, homemade, canned
- In the pantry9 months to 12 months
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 pantry 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.
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.
Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza, in the pantry. Refrigerating unopened jars will NOT lengthen shelf life.
Can you freeze tomato sauce?
The USDA prints no freezer time for tomato sauce. 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 tomato sauce has gone bad
Go by the date first: tomato sauce keeps 3–5 days 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 3 days to 5 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. 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 Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza past its 3 days to 5 days in the fridge once opened window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. A jar or can that is bulging, leaking or rusted goes out unopened, and so does an opened one with mold at the rim or a sour, fizzing smell.
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 Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza by storage behavior, running 4 days to 1 month and bracketing its 5 days.
- Broth, homemadekeeps 3–4 days in the fridge
- Aioli, homemadekeeps 3–4 days in the fridge
- Chicken broth/stock/consommé, commercially producedkeeps 3–4 days in the fridge once openedup to 7 days in the fridge
- Vegetable stock/broth, commercially producedkeeps 3–4 days in the fridge once openedup to 7 days in the fridge
- Duck fatkeeps 30 days in the fridge
- Frying oil, re-usedkeeps 1 month 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 Tomato sauce, spaghetti, pizza, 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: homemade, homemade sauce, homemade spaghetti sauce, homemade tomato sauce, pizza, sauce, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce
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.