The yellow-billed kite was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[6] A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2005 compared DNA sequences of two mitochondrial loci of the red, black and yellow-billed kites.

It found that there was significant divergence between the three species, but unexpectedly, the two clades corresponding to the M. a. aegyptius and M. a. parasitus subspecies did not form a monophyletic group.

They are found in almost all habitats, including parks in suburbia, but rare in the arid Namib and Karoo.

It is mostly an intra-African breeding migrant, present in Southern Africa July–March and sometimes as late as May.