Velociraptor was named by Osborn (1924). It was considered monophyletic by Currie (2000).

It was assigned to Megalosaurinidae by Osborn (1924); to Ornithomimidae by Huene (1927); to Compsognathinae by Nopcsa (1928); to Coelurosauria by Kuhn (1939), Huene (1958); to Compsognathidae by Huene (1959), Tatarinov (1964); to Coeluridae by Romer (1956), Romer (1966), Steel (1970), Bonaparte (1978); to Dromaeosaurinae by Gilmore (1933), Paul (1988); to Dromaeosauridae by Colbert and Russell (1969), Ostrom (1969), Sues (1977), Sues (1977), Rozhdestvensky (1977), Sues (1978), Santafé et al. (1982), Thulborn (1984), Welles (1984), Buffetaut et al. (1986), Gauthier (1986), Carroll (1988), Dong (1992), Osmólska (1996), Padian (1997), Ryan (1997), Norell and Makovicky (1997), Sereno (1997), Le Loeuff and Buffetaut (1998), Norell and Makovicky (1999), Norell et al. (2000), Currie (2003), Rauhut (2003), Smith (2007), Turner et al. (2007), Godefroit et al. (2008), Norell et al. (2009), Ezcurra (2009), Benson and Barrett (2009), Longrich et al. (2010), Apesteguía et al. (2011), Porfiri et al. (2011), Prieto-Marquez et al. (2012), Pei et al. (2014), Hendrickx and Mateus (2014), Delcourt and Grillo (2014), Gianechini et al. (2017); and to Velociraptorinae by Barsbold (1983), Currie (1992), Currie (1995), Chiappe et al. (1996), Currie (1997), Sereno (1998), Zinke (1998), Barsbold and Osmólska (1999), Currie (2000), Chiappe (2002), Senter et al. (2004), Norell and Makovicky (2004), Kiernan and Schwimmer (2004), Burnham et al. (2004), Longrich and Currie (2009), Chanthasit and Buffetaut (2009), Gianechini et al. (2011), Evans et al. (2013), Williamson and Brusatte (2014), Jasinski et al. (2020).