How long doCookieslast in the pantry?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — soft and crispy — and they do not keep for the same time: Cookies, soft holds 2 months to 3 months outside the freezer, Cookies, crispy holds 4 months to 6 months.

The freezer helps less here than you would expect

The freezer buys less here than its reputation suggests: 4 times what the sealed pantry gives, 3 months against 12 months, both still measured in months. For this item freezing is an extension rather than a different way of keeping it.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

An unusual pairing: the USDA rates the pantry and the freezer for this item but skips the refrigerator entirely, one of 126 foods of the 466 that get no refrigerator time. The source also indexes it as soft and crispy.

Cookies, soft

• In the freezer8 months to 12 months
• Unopened · in the pantry2 months to 3 months

Cookies, crispy

• In the freezer8 months to 12 months
• Unopened · in the pantry4 months to 6 months

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Cookies, soft

• In the freezerUse by8 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
• Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 months to 3 months after the day you bought it

Cookies, crispy

• In the freezerUse by8 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
• Unopened · in the pantryUse by4 months to 6 months after the day you bought 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. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Cookies, soft 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.

Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. 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 Cookies, soft past its 2 months to 3 months in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold takes the whole package out rather than the slice it grew on, and so does a musty or old-oil smell in a flour or a mix.

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.

Is that a long time?

2 items in the Baked Goods list keep exactly as long as Cookies, soft, 3 months, so they all share place 36 of 52 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 30% of them.

Items that behave the same way

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 7 days to 3 months against the 3 months of Cookies, soft, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Bread, homemadekeeps exactly as long
• Garlickeeps 1 month sealed in the pantry
• Commercial bread products, including pan breads, flat breads, rolls, and bunskeeps 14 days sealed in the pantry
• Commercial cakes and muffinskeeps 3 days sealed in the pantryup to 10 days in the fridge once opened
• Herbskeeps 7 days sealed in the fridge
• Cheesecakekeeps 5 days in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

No other product in the file is rated in exactly this set of places: freezer from the day of purchase and pantry from the day of purchase, 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 — Garlic, Commercial bread products and Commercial cakes and muffins. 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.

• Garlic1 month sealed in the pantry
• Commercial bread products14 days sealed in the pantry
• Commercial cakes and muffins3 days sealed in the pantryup to 10 days in the fridge once opened
• Herbs7 days sealed in the fridge
• Fruit cake6 months sealed in the pantryup to 12 months in the fridge once opened
• Cheesecake5 days in the fridge once opened
• Dairy filled eclairs2 days in the fridge once opened
• Doughnuts1 day sealed in the pantryup to 2 days in the fridge once opened

The rest of the Bakery shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Bakery shelf together with 15 others, and 2 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Pastries at 14 months down to Macaroons at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Bread, Commercial bread products and Commercial cakes and muffins, which is the order the list below is printed in. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so Cookies, soft sits here at 3 months rather than at the 2 months sealed in the pantry its own answer prints.

• Bread3 months2 months in the fridge
• Commercial bread products3 weeks14 days sealed in the pantry
• Commercial cakes and muffins10 days3 days sealed in the pantry
• Cheesecake7 days5 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit pies1 week1 day in the pantry
• Muffin7 days3 days in the pantry
• Quiche5 days3 days in the fridge once opened
• Cream pies4 days3 days in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 3 months, the Baked Goods aisle gives 35 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Flavored or herb mixes at 6 months against this one's 3 months; after it come Biscuit or pancake mix, Fruit cake and Flour. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 15 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Garlic and Commercial bread products among them.

• Flavored or herb mixes6 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Biscuit or pancake mix9 months9 months sealed in the pantry
• Fruit cake12 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Flour12 months6 months in the pantry once opened
• Frosting or icing12 months2 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Gelatin12 months3 months in the pantry once opened
• Oils12 months3 months in the pantry once opened
• Nut oils12 months6 months in the fridge once opened

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 199 and 200 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 2 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Cookies, soft, 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 same record answers to soft and crispy in the source's own index.

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: cookie, crispy, soft

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.