How long do eggs last in the fridge?

Eggs sit at the opposite end of the fridge from milk and chicken in every way that matters. Chicken gets three days. Milk gets five to seven. Eggs, per CSIRO’s refrigerated-storage guide, get three to six weeks — one of the longest windows of any fresh item in the shop, and somehow still one of the most second-guessed.

The number: three to six weeks

CSIRO’s figure covers eggs kept refrigerated at home, and it is the same figure behind the eggs row in our full shelf-life reference. Three to six weeks is a wide range, and the difference between the two ends comes down to how old the eggs were at purchase and how steadily cold they have been kept since. A carton bought fresh and kept on a fridge shelf sits comfortably at the long end.

That makes eggs one of the few items where the date stamped on the carton usually expires before the food does anything wrong. An egg a few days past its best-before date, kept cold the whole time, is a quality question — not a safety alarm. The difference between those two kinds of date matters more for eggs than for almost anything else in the fridge.

Keep the carton, skip the door

Two storage habits do most of the work here.

First, the carton is not packaging to discard — it is the storage container. It slows moisture loss, keeps eggs from absorbing fridge smells through their porous shells, and carries the packed-on and best-before dates you will otherwise be guessing at in week four.

Second, the moulded egg rack in the fridge door is the one place eggs should not live. The door is the warmest part of the fridge and swings in temperature every time it opens — the same reason milk ages faster on the door shelf. A carton on a middle shelf holds a steadier cold than any door rack.

The check that settles it

For an egg of uncertain age, crack it onto a plate rather than straight into the pan or the bowl. A sour or sulphurous smell is the unmistakable sign it is done — an off egg does not whisper. Looks alone are less conclusive: whites thin out and yolks flatten with age in ways that are about freshness, not safety. Smell is the test worth trusting, the same rule this site gives for milk.

Why eggs still end up wasted

A three-to-six-week window should make eggs nearly impossible to waste, and yet they turn up in the bin anyway — almost always for the same reason. The carton empties to two eggs, a fresh dozen arrives, and the old pair gets buried behind it with no date anyone remembers. The food that lasts longest is the food that waits longest to be forgotten.

That is the exact failure Pantry is built to remove. Scan the receipt and the carton is dated from the day it was bought — so five weeks later, the question is not “how old are these” but a number on a list every phone in the household can see. The long window becomes an advantage again: plenty of time, and a clock that does not depend on anyone’s memory of which shop the carton came from.