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

It was synonymized subjectively with Troodon by Paul (1988).

It was assigned to Megalosaurinidae by Osborn (1924); to Ornithomimidae by Huene (1927); to Dromaeosaurinae by Gilmore (1933); to Coelurosauria by Kuhn (1939), Huene (1958); to Compsognathidae by Huene (1959), Tatarinov (1964); to Theropoda by Ostrom (1965); to Coeluridae by Romer (1956), Estes (1964), Romer (1966), Steel (1970); to Dromaeosauridae by Ostrom (1969), Santafé et al. (1982); to Saurornithoididae by Barsbold (1974), Sues (1977), Rozhdestvensky (1977), Bonaparte (1978), Sues (1978), Molnar (1978), Lehman (1981), Barsbold (1983), Thulborn (1984), Carroll (1988), Dong (1992); to Troodontidae by Russell (1969), Gauthier (1986), Currie (1992), Russell and Dong (1994), Currie and Peng (1994), Chure (1994), Varricchio (1997), Barsbold (1997), Currie (2000), Norell et al. (2000), Currie and Dong (2001), Chiappe (2002), Rauhut (2003), Makovicky et al. (2003), Senter et al. (2004), Makovicky and Norell (2004), Norell and Hwang (2004), Smith (2007), Averianov and Sues (2007), Novas et al. (2008), Norell et al. (2009), Bever and Norell (2009), Chanthasit and Buffetaut (2009), Longrich et al. (2010), Lü et al. (2010), Zanno et al. (2011), Porfiri et al. (2011), Xu et al. (2012), Godefroit et al. (2013), Tsuihiji et al. (2014), Delcourt and Grillo (2014), Williamson and Brusatte (2014), Gianechini et al. (2017); and to Troodontinae by van der Reest and Currie (2017), Sellés et al. (2021).