Teratodontidae was named by Savage (1965).

It was synonymized subjectively with Hyaenodontinae by Van Valen (1967); it was reranked as the subfamily Teratodontinae by Solé et al. (2014), Borths et al. (2016) and Borths and Seiffert (2017); it was reranked as the unranked clade Teratodontinae by Borths and Stevens (2017) and Solé and Mennecart (2019).

It was assigned to Oxyaenoidea by Savage (1965); to Creodonta by Morales et al. (2007) and Morales et al. (2008); to Hyaenodontidae by Solé et al. (2014); and to Hyainailouroidea by Borths et al. (2016), Borths and Stevens (2017), Borths and Seiffert (2017) and Solé and Mennecart (2019).