Brachiosauridae was named by Riggs (1904).

It was synonymized subjectively with Morosauridae by Charig (1967), Swinton (1970) and Bonaparte (1978); it was synonymized subjectively with Camarasauridae by Steel (1970).

It was assigned to Opisthocoelia by Riggs (1904); to Bothrosauropodidae by Huene (1948); to Cetiosauria by Colbert (1964); to Saurischia by Madsen and Miller (1979); to Sauropoda by Bakker (1986); to Bothrosauropodoidea by Kuhn (1966), Dong (1990) and Zhao (1993); to Neosauropoda by Upchurch (1995) and Upchurch (1995); to Titanosauroidea by Upchurch (1997); to Sauropoda by Molnar (1992) and McIntosh (1997); to Titanomorpha by Sereno (1997); to Sauropoda by Huene (1927), Swinton (1936), Romer (1956), Romer (1966), Reig (1970), Galton (1977), Ostrom (1980), Santafé et al. (1982), Russell (1984), Bonaparte (1986), Carroll (1988), McIntosh (1990), Benton (1990), Hunt et al. (1995) and Bonaparte (1999); to Camarasauromorpha by Moser et al. (2006); to Sauropoda by Nopcsa (1928), Hay (1930), Roxo (1937), Lapparent (1947), Delair (1960), Parsch (1963), Tatarinov (1964), Delair (1973), Langston (1974), Bonaparte (1980) and Chure et al. (2006); to Macronaria by Sereno et al. (1999), Mateus and Milàn (2010) and Mannion et al. (2013); and to Titanosauriformes by Sereno (1998), Wilson and Sereno (1998), Sereno (1999), Upchurch et al. (2004), Royo-Torres et al. (2006), Royo-Torres et al. (2007), Rose (2007), Taylor (2009), D'Emic (2012), D'Emic (2013), D'Emic et al. (2016), Mannion et al. (2017) and Apesteguía et al. (2021).