Platynota was named by Baur (1890). It is extant. It was considered monophyletic by Conrad (2006).

It was reranked as the superfamily Platynota by Kuhn (1946), McDowell and Bogert (1954); it was synonymized subjectively with Varanoidea by Kuhn (1966); it was reranked as the unranked clade Platynota by Cernansky et al. (2015).

It was assigned to Lacertilia by Kuhn (1946); to Anguinomorpha by McDowell and Bogert (1954); to Lacertilia by Miller (1967); to Squamata by Wiffen (1990); to Sauria by Wiffen (1980), Lingham-Soliar (1995); to Anguimorpha by Estes (1964), Welles and Gregg (1971), Borsuk-Bialynicka (1984), Nydam (2000), Nydam (2002); to Anguiformes by Conrad (2006); and to Anguimorpha by Evans (1994), Evans et al. (2006), Norell et al. (2007), Cernansky et al. (2015).