How long doesVegan Cheddar Cheeselast 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 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.

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

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, 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

Is this window about safety or about taste?

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, throw it out rather than taste it: a perishable food can carry enough bacteria to make you ill while it 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. 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 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 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?

Among the 29 items the USDA files under Dairy Products & Eggs, this item ranks 6 by how long it keeps outside the freezer. String Cheese holds 5 months, Butter holds 2 months. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 81% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 4 weeks to 6 months and bracketing its 4 months.

• String Cheesekeeps 5 months sealed in the fridge
• Butterkeeps 1 month sealed in the fridge
• Margarinekeeps 6 months sealed in the fridge
• Eggskeeps 3 weeks sealed in the fridgein shell
• Whipped cream, aerosol cankeeps 3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Pimento cheese, packagedkeeps 4 weeks in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

6 other products are rated in exactly these places — refrigerator from the day of purchase 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 Caviar, Cottage cheese and Bamboo shoots. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 6 shown, 1 keeps longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Horseradish at 12 months.

• Caviar2 days in the fridge once openedup to 4 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Cottage cheese1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Bamboo shoots5 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Ricotta1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Kefir1 day in the fridge once openedup to 1 week sealed in the fridge
• Horseradish3 months in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the fridge

Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.

• Egg substitutes3 days in the fridge
• String Cheese5 months sealed in the fridge

The rest of the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf together with 28 others, and 5 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Powdered milk at 5 years down to Pudding at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are String Cheese, Butter and Margarine, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Dairy Products & Eggs the same product ranks 6 of 29. The middle of the shelf is Whipped topping, at 2 weeks.

• String Cheese5 months5 months sealed in the fridge
• Butter2 months1 month sealed in the fridge
• Margarine6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
• Eggs5 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped cream4 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Pimento cheese4 weeks4 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Coffee creamer3 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Buttermilk2 weeks1 week sealed in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 4 months, Dairy Products & Eggs offers 3 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Nacho cheese at 2 years against this one's 4 months, and the rest are Ghee and Powdered milk. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 23 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Butter and Eggs among them.

• Nacho cheese2 years2 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Ghee2 years1 year in the fridge
• Powdered milk5 years3 months in the pantry once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 545 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 2 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in months, 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: 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.