Background: Plants are easily affected by various environmental factors such as temperature, high salinity, and drought which will cause poor plant development and reduce crop yield. Transcription factors (TFs) are related to the stress resistance found in many plant species and play vital roles in the growth and development of plants. Among them, the RAV (related to ABI3/VP1) gene family, which is a plant-specific type of transcription factor containing AP2 (APETALA2) DNA binding domain and B3 DNA binding domain, is the focus in this research.Results: There more RAV genes/proteins (RAVs) were present in Gymnospermae and Angiosperm, a few RAVs in Bryophyta and Lycophyte, and no RAV gene was predicted in Chlorophyta. RAVs could be defined as three main groups, based on our phylogenetic analysis. The members of clade I included all plant stages from Chlorophyta to Angiosperm except Monocots. Clade II only contained eudicots plant species. Clade III, as a branch consisting of monocots plant species and Marchantia polymorpha, may help us explore the evolutionary relationship of RAVs between Bryophyta and Monocots. According to our results, it is shown that RAVs first appeared in bryophytes. While the vasculature continues to develop and evolve, RAV gene family also has functional differentiation and has formed new functions due to the existence of gene replication events.Conclusions: Our findings indicate that the RAVs originated from Bryophytes, and RAVs of these plant species had obvious divisions in the evolutionary tree, which revealed the evolution of RAVs. These results have guiding significance for further research.