Most cooked leftovers are safe in the fridge for up to three days. Cooked rice and pasta are the exception, at two days, because they carry a higher risk of bacterial contamination.
That three-day window only applies if the food was refrigerated properly in the first place. Get the cooling step wrong and the clock either does not start where you think it does, or the food was never safe to begin with.
The short answer
Three days for most fridge leftovers, two days for rice and pasta, according to NSW Food Authority guidance for households. After that, bin it rather than taste-testing it, since the bacteria that cause food poisoning do not reliably change the smell, taste or appearance of food.
That number assumes the leftovers went into the fridge within two hours of cooking and have stayed below 5°C since. If either of those did not happen, the three days does not apply.
What to check
How long it sat out before refrigeration. NSW Food Authority guidance is to get leftovers into the fridge or freezer within two hours of cooking or serving. Food left out for more than four hours should be thrown out rather than refrigerated at all, because it has spent too long in the range bacteria multiply fastest in.
What it actually is. Rice and pasta are treated separately because they are more prone to carrying a bacteria that is not destroyed by reheating. Meat, poultry, seafood and dairy-based leftovers follow the general three-day guidance but are also the ones worth being stricter with in practice.
How it has been stored. Leftovers kept in a shallow, covered container cool faster and more evenly than a deep pot cooling on the bench, which matters because slow cooling is one of the easiest ways to accidentally extend the time food spends in the unsafe temperature range. Fridge organisation for a full family fridge covers where in the fridge leftovers should actually sit once they are in.
Whether it has already been reheated once. Reheat leftovers only once. Reheating, cooling and reheating again gives bacteria another cycle to multiply in, and each cycle adds risk the three-day window does not account for.
Decision criteria
Within the window, cooled properly, reheated once at most: safe to eat, reheated until steaming hot right through, not just warmed.
Past three days, or past two for rice and pasta: bin it. There is no reliable way to tell by looking, smelling or tasting whether leftovers have become unsafe, so the date is the only test that actually works.
Left out longer than four hours before refrigeration: bin it regardless of how long it has technically been in the fridge since, because the clock on safety started when it left the stove, not when it went in the fridge.
Know you will not get to it within three days: freeze it instead of refrigerating it. Freezing effectively stops the clock that fridge storage keeps running, which is the better option for anything made in a batch or cooked ahead. Freezer organisation and labelling that actually gets used covers the labelling habit that makes frozen leftovers something you actually use rather than an unidentified block of ice found months later.
What to do next
Write the date on it before it goes in the fridge. A piece of tape and a pen is the entire system, and it is the only thing that makes the three-day rule usable instead of a guess. If getting leftovers eaten rather than binned is the actual problem in your house, using leftovers so they get eaten covers scheduling and reshaping them into a different meal.
Reheat to steaming hot, not just warm, and serve straight away rather than letting reheated food sit out again.
If the power goes out, the fridge and freezer timelines change, and the decisions that matter happen in the first few hours. The power is out: what to do about the fridge, hour by hour covers that situation specifically, since the three-day rule assumes a fridge that has been running the whole time.
When in doubt, throw it out. None of this guidance is a reason to push a day past the window on something that looks fine, since looking fine is exactly what unsafe leftovers usually do.
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