Deinonychus was named by Ostrom (1969). It is not extant. It was considered monophyletic by Currie (2000).

It was synonymized subjectively with Velociraptor by Paul (1988) and Paul (1988).

It was assigned to Coelurosauria by Gauthier et al. (1989) and Pérez-Moreno et al. (1994); to Dromaeosaurinae by Currie (2000), Senter et al. (2004) and Burnham et al. (2004); to Velociraptorinae by Currie (1992), Currie (1995), Chiappe et al. (1996), Currie (1997), Brinkman et al. (1998), Zinke (1998), Norell and Makovicky (1999), Barsbold and Osmólska (1999), Chiappe (2002), Currie and Varricchio (2004), Kiernan and Schwimmer (2004), Chanthasit and Buffetaut (2009), Gianechini et al. (2011) and Williamson and Brusatte (2014); to Eudromaeosauria by Longrich and Currie (2009) and Jasinski et al. (2020); and to Dromaeosauridae by Colbert and Russell (1969), Ostrom (1969), Ostrom (1969), Ostrom (1970), Sues (1977), Sues (1978), Molnar (1980), Santafé et al. (1982), Thulborn (1984), Russell (1984), Buffetaut et al. (1986), Gauthier (1986), Carroll (1988), Le Loeuff et al. (1992), Osmólska (1996), Kirkland (1997), Norell and Makovicky (1997), Sereno (1997), Le Loeuff and Buffetaut (1998), Rauhut (2003), Norell and Makovicky (2004), Weishampel (2006), Martínez and Novas (2006), Smith (2007), Porfiri et al. (2007), Turner et al. (2007), Godefroit et al. (2008), Benson and Barrett (2009), Porfiri et al. (2011), Prieto-Marquez et al. (2012), Pei et al. (2014), Delcourt and Grillo (2014), Parsons and Parsons (2015), White et al. (2015), Gianechini et al. (2017), Dalla Vecchia (2020) and Suarez et al. (2021).