Anguilla, Antigua And Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada (B), Cayman Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, St Kitts And Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, USA (B), Venezuela.
Vagrant to Jamaica, Netherlands, St Pierre and Miquelon (P), United Kingdom, Virgin Islands (U.S.).
Breeds south-eastern Canada (south-eastern Manitoba east to southern Quebec) southern in eastern USA to northern Arkansas, northern Alabama, western North Carolina and Virginia and west to central South Dakota and central Kansas. Migrates to north-western South America, mainly in western Amazon Basin from south-eastern Colombia, eastern Ecuador and northern Peru east to western Brazil and south to central Bolivia.
 
Population
Estimated population is 2,200,000 (2010).
Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea) [XC564227]
by id from Lunenburg, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, Canada (song)
Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea) [XC761257]
by Daniel Lane from McKaig Nature Center, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States (call)
Subspecies
No subspecies.
Molecular-genetic evidence indicates that this genus forms a monophyletic group with Habia and Chlorothraupis, and that all three are more closely related to cardinals (Cardinalidae) than to true tanagers. This species has in the past been regarded as most closely related to Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana), in part because of limited hybridization with that species, but cladistic analysis based on mitochondrial DNA (cytochrome b gene) indicates that the two are not each other's closest relative. Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana) appears to be most closely related to Flame-colored Tanager (Piranga bidentata) and the "Red Tanager (Piranga flava) group", the three forming a phylogenetic clade. Depending on analyses used, the present species would be either a sister taxon to this clade, or sister to this clade and Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra).