Nepenthes kurata was described in 2013 as a species known only from Mount Malindang in Misamis Occidental Province, Mindanao, where it was recorded at c. 1400 m altitude. This would make it one of the most westerly known Nepenthes species in Mindanao. (In 1995 N. mirabilis was found near Polanco, further to the west.) This taxon was previously described as a variety of N. alata—N. alata var. ecristata—in John Muirhead Macfarlane's 1908 monograph, Nepenthaceae.