Saurornitholestes was named by Sues (1978). It is not extant.

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

It was assigned to Coeluridae by Dodson (1983); to Dromaeosaurinae by Senter et al. (2004), Burnham et al. (2004); to Microraptorinae by Ezcurra (2009); to Velociraptorinae by Currie et al. (1990), Currie (1992), Currie (1995), Currie (1997), Brinkman et al. (1998), Zinke (1998), Norell and Makovicky (1999), Currie and Varricchio (2004), Kiernan and Schwimmer (2004), Sullivan (2006), Chanthasit and Buffetaut (2009), Gianechini et al. (2011), Jasinski (2015); to Dromaeosauridae by Sues (1978), Thulborn (1984), Russell (1984), Clemens (1986), Buffetaut et al. (1986), Currie (1987), Carroll (1988), Osmolska (1990), Currie and Peng (1994), Le Loeuff and Buffetaut (1995), Eberth (1997), Norell and Makovicky (1997), Sereno (1997), Le Loeuff and Buffetaut (1998), Sullivan and Lucas (2000), Eberth et al. (2001), Peng et al. (2001), Sankey et al. (2002), Rauhut (2003), Norell and Makovicky (2004), Sankey et al. (2005), Martínez and Novas (2006), Turner et al. (2007), Longrich (2008), Godefroit et al. (2008), Godefroit et al. (2009), Brown and Druckenmiller (2011), Prieto-Marquez et al. (2012), Pei et al. (2014), Hendrickx and Mateus (2014), Williamson and Brusatte (2014), van der Reest and Currie (2017); and to Saurornitholestinae by Longrich and Currie (2009), Larson and Currie (2013), Currie and Evans (2020), Jasinski et al. (2020).