How long does Vegan Cheddar cheese last in the fridge once opened?
Turning the range into a date
Vegan Cheddar cheese keeps 3–7 days in the fridge once opened. Two clocks run on this item: one from the day it went into storage and one from the day the seal broke. Both are listed below, 2 rows in all.
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by4 months after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 7 days after the day you opened it
What opening the package actually costs
Opening the package is the decision that settles this page. Sealed, the item holds 4 months sealed in the fridge; once open it holds 7 days open in the fridge, the same food measured in days instead of months, a drop of 17 times. On the same shelf it sits 7 of 31, between String Cheese at 5 months and Milk at 3 months.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The refrigerator is the only place the USDA gives this item a storage time, as it does for 64 of the 466 foods the USDA lists.
- Unopened · in the fridge4 months
- Once opened · in the fridge3 days to 7 days
Can you freeze vegan Cheddar cheese?
The USDA prints no freezer time for vegan Cheddar cheese. 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 vegan Cheddar cheese has gone bad
Go by the date first: vegan Cheddar cheese keeps 3–7 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 3 days to 7 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food: the source files Vegan Cheddar Cheese under Dairy Products & Eggs, 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 fridge 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 Vegan Cheddar Cheese past its 3 days to 7 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. 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 this item by storage behavior, running 5 weeks to 6 months and bracketing its 4 months.
- String Cheesekeeps 5 months sealed in the fridge
- Milkkeeps 7–10 days in the fridge once openedultra-pasteurized · up to 3 months in the fridge
- Butterkeeps 1–2 months sealed in the fridge
- Margarinekeeps 6 months sealed in the fridge
- Cheesekeeps 3–4 weeks in the fridge once openedhard such as cheddar, swiss, block parmesan · up to 6 months sealed in the fridge
- Eggskeeps 3–5 weeks sealed in the fridgein shell
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.
USDA index terms: cheddar, cheese
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.