It occurs in the Eastern Himalayan foothills, Myanmar, Thailand, northern Indochina and south to the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

The rufous-fronted babbler was formally described in 1873 by the English naturalist Allan Octavian Hume based on a specimen that had been collected by Eugene W. Oates on the western slopes of the Pegu Range of central Myanmar.

[5] Nine subspecies are recognised:[5] The first four subspecies on the above list (ambiguum, planicola, adjunctum and insuspectum) were formerly sometimes treated as a separate species, the buff-chested babbler (Cyanoderma ambiguum).

[5][7] The binomial name Stachyris rodolphei was proposed by Herbert Girton Deignan in 1939 for three babbler specimens collected at Doi Chiang Dao in Thailand.

[8] It is buff-brown with paler brown underparts and a dull rufous crown.