How long doFruit Juice in cartonslast in the fridge once opened?

What opening the package actually costs

Opening the package is the decision that settles this page. Sealed, the item holds 3 weeks sealed in the pantry; once open it holds 12 days open in the fridge, the same food measured in days instead of weeks, a drop of 1.8 times.

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.

• Unopened · in the pantry3 weeks
• Once opened · in the pantry7 days to 12 days
• Once opened · in the fridge8 days to 12 days

Turning the range into a date

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, 3 rows in all.

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by3 weeks after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by7 days to 12 days after the day you opened it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by8 days to 12 days after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 8 days to 12 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: it is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. 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 it past its 8 days to 12 days in the fridge once opened window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Fizzing that should not be there, cloudiness, floating strands or a sour smell 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: 8 days to 12 days in the fridge once opened against 7 days to 12 days in the pantry once opened. This page answers with the refrigerator, the longer of the two. 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?

2 items in the Beverages list keep exactly as long as this item, 3 weeks, so they all share place 14 of 22 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 52% of them.

Items that behave the same way

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 6 days to 3 weeks against the 3 weeks of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Apple cider, freshkeeps exactly as long
• Juice, boxeskeeps 8 days in the fridge once opened
• Soy or rice beveragekeeps 7 days in the fridge once opened
• Orange juicekeeps 7 days in the fridge once openedcommercially packaged carton
• Yuzu, fruit, freshkeeps 5 days in the fridge
• Apple juice, fresh squeezedkeeps 6 days in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

8 other products are rated in exactly these places — pantry from the day of purchase, pantry after opening and refrigerator after opening — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Fruits, dried, Flour and Oils. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 8 shown, 8 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Cornmeal at 2 years.

• Fruits, dried6 months in the fridge once opened
• Flour6 months in the pantry once openedwhite
• Oils3 months in the pantry once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Nut oils6 months in the fridge once opened
• Tamarind paste6 months in the pantry once opened
• Sun dried tomatoes3 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Cornmeal6 months sealed in the pantryregular, degerminated · up to 2 years in the pantry once opened
• Rice1 year in the pantry once openedwhite or wild · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Beverages shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Beverages shelf together with 21 others, and 13 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Red wine at 5 years down to Soda at 3 days. Nearest this product by window are Apple cider, Juice and Soy or rice beverage, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Beverages the same product ranks 14 of 22. The middle of the shelf is Coconut water, at 12 months. 2 products on this shelf publish no window outside the freezer and stay out of the order.

• Apple cider3 weeks2 weeks in the fridge
• Juice12 days8 days in the fridge once opened
• Soy or rice beverage10 days7 days in the fridge once opened
• Orange juice10 days7 days in the fridge once opened
• Yuzu7 days5 days in the fridge
• Apple juice6 days6 days in the fridge
• Carrot juice6 days6 days in the fridge
• Soda3 days2 days in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 3 weeks, the Beverages aisle gives 13 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Cream liquors at 8 months against this one's 3 weeks; after it come Coconut water, Yuzu juice and Nectar. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 6 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Soy or rice beverage and Orange juice among them.

• Cream liquors8 months6 months in the pantry
• Coconut water12 months1 day in the fridge once opened
• Yuzu juice12 months3 months in the fridge once opened
• Nectar18 months12 months sealed in the pantry
• Lime juice18 months2 months in the fridge once opened
• Lemon juice18 months2 months in the fridge once opened
• Vegetable juice18 months18 months sealed in the pantry
• Diet powder mixes and drink mixes24 months1 month in the pantry once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 404 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 3 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in weeks, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. Every figure here comes from one fixed snapshot, USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026, and is not refreshed page by page.

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: carton, cartons, drink, drinks, fruit, fruit drinks, fruit juice, Fruit Juice in cartons, juice in cartons, punch

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.