Saltasaurus was named by Bonaparte and Powell (1980). It is the type genus of Saltasaurinae, Saltasauridae, Saltasaurini.

It was assigned to Titanosauroidea by Upchurch (1997); to Titanosauria by Wilson and Sereno (1998); to Titanosauridae by Molnar (1980), Bonaparte and Powell (1980), Bonaparte (1984), Bonaparte (1984), Carroll (1988), McIntosh (1990), McIntosh (1990), Salgado (1993), Upchurch (1995), Upchurch (1995), Le Loeuff et al. (1995), Jacobs et al. (1996), Chatterjee and Rudra (1996), McIntosh (1997), Prasad and Sahni (1999), Bonaparte (1999), Smith et al. (2001), Powell (2003); to Titanosauriformes by Sekiya (2011); to Saltasaurinae by Powell (1992), Bonaparte (1996), Salgado and Calvo (1997), Salgado et al. (1997), Sereno (1998), Salgado and Azpilicueta (2000), Wilson (2002), Wilson and Upchurch (2003), Calvo and González Riga (2003), Salgado (2003), Franco-Rosas et al. (2004), You et al. (2004), Salgado and Coria (2005), Curry Rogers (2005), Calvo et al. (2007), Calvo et al. (2007), González Riga et al. (2009), Suteethorn et al. (2010), Otero (2010), Ksepka and Norell (2010), Filippi et al. (2011), D'Emic and Wilson (2011), González Riga (2011), Navarrete et al. (2011), D'Emic (2012), González Riga and Ortiz David (2014); to Somphospondyli by Xing et al. (2015); to Saltasaurinae by Zurriaguz et al. (2017); to Saltasauridae by Upchurch et al. (2004), Royo-Torres et al. (2006), Wilson (2006), Wilson and Mohabey (2006), Zaher et al. (2011), Mannion et al. (2013), Mocho et al. (2014), Poropat et al. (2016), Gorscak et al. (2017), Páramo et al. (2020); and to Saltasaurini by Navarro et al. (2022).