Fulgurites have been classified by Pasek et al. (2012) into five types related to the type of sediment in which the fulgurite formed, as follows:
* Type I – sand fulgurites with tubaceous structure; their central axial void may be collapsed
* Type II – soil fulgurites; these are glass-rich, and form in a wide range of sediment compositions, including clay-rich soils, silt-rich soils, gravel-rich soils, and loessoid; these may be tubaceous, branching, vesicular, irregular/slaggy, or may display a combination of these structures, and can produce exogenic fulgurites (droplet fulgurites)
* Type III – caliche or calcic sediment fulgurites, having thick, often surficially glazed granular walls with calcium-rich vitreous groundmass with little or no lechatelierite glass; their shapes are variable, with multiple narrow central channels common, and can span the entire range of morphological and structural variation for fulguritic objects
* Type IV – rock fulgurites, which are either crusts on minimally altered rocks, networks of tunneling within rocks, vesicular outgassed rocks (often glazed by a silicide-rich and/or metal oxide crust), or completely vitrified and dense rock material and masses of these forms with little sedimentary groundmass
* Type V – [droplet] fulgurites (exogenic fulgurites), which show evidence of ejection (e.g. spheroidal, filamentous, or aerodynamic), related by composition to Type II and Type IV fulgurites
* phytofulgurite – a proposed class of objects resulting from partial to total alteration of biomass (e.g. grasses, lichens, moss, wood) by lightning. Pasek et al. (2012) described fulgurites as "natural glasses formed by cloud-to-ground lightning." Pasek et al. excluded phytofulgurites from their classification scheme because they are not glasses, so classifying them as a subset of fulgurites is debatable.