About ThawDates
ThawDates answers one question well: when does the bird leave the freezer? You bring the weight and the dinner date; it hands back the freezer-to-fridge moment on a calendar leaf — and when that moment has already passed, it switches to the rescue plan that still fits instead of scolding you with a date in the past.
Where the numbers come from
Every rate, temperature, and timetable here is published USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service guidance — public-domain, and linked so you can check us:
How the schedule is planned
Deliberately on the safe end, everywhere. USDA allows 24 hours per 4 to 5 pounds for refrigerator thawing; we book a full day per 4 pounds. Oven time uses the top of USDA's 325 °F band for your weight, plus a half hour of resting-and-carving slack. Start deadlines round down to the half hour. If any of that padding turns out unnecessary, you're merely early — and a fridge-thawed turkey happily waits 1 to 2 days (a ham, 3 to 5).
All countdown math runs in your browser at the moment you look at the page, against your own clock. Nothing here assumes a particular year, holiday, or timezone.
What ThawDates won't do
It won't help you thaw on the counter, in the garage, or in a hot bathtub — USDA's danger-zone rule (40–140 °F, 2-hour limit) isn't a style preference, and the safety lines on this site play it straight even where the rest of the copy doesn't. It also won't sell you anything, with one honest exception: the cook-time page suggests owning an instant-read thermometer, because 165 °F is a measurement, not a vibe. That link may earn this site a small commission at no cost to you.
Colophon
Static site, no accounts, no tracking pixels, no cookie banner — it reads USDA tables and does arithmetic, which requires knowing nothing about you. Questions or corrections: hello@thawdates.com.