Many species are found in Australasia, others occurring northwards through the Pacific to Southeast Asia, with a small number in South America.

[1] The Epacridoideae form a well supported monophyletic group within the family Ericaceae, clearly diagnosable using a combination of morphological characters.

These include a lignified leaf epidermis, dry, membrane-like (scarious) bracts on the inflorescence, and a persistent corolla.

[5][6][7] Although Sweet and Walker-Arnott had treated the group as a subfamily, botanists preferred Brown's rank of family, as in the Cronquist system, until both morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies in the 1990s showed that excluding Epacridaceae from Ericaceae made the latter paraphyletic.

However, some species occur in southern South America (Lebetanthus), Hawaii (Styphelia), and Southeast Asia (Leucopogon).