The comparison
The world's tallest building versus the world's second-tallest by honest height. Burj Khalifa at 828m architectural top beats Shanghai Tower at 632m by 196m on the headline number. On honest height - where humans actually go - Burj Khalifa leads by less than 2 metres: 585.4m vs 583.5m. This is the tightest honest-height contest at the top of any global ranking. And Shanghai Tower nearly matches it with 21.6 percentage points less vanity.
Architectural top vs Honest Height
Burj Khalifa - 29.3% vanity
Shanghai Tower - 7.7% vanity
Occupied height. Vanity (non-occupiable structure).Vanity Ratio explained →
The honest take
If honest height were the global standard, Burj Khalifa would still be #1 - but only barely. The building that 'should' be #1 by architectural marketing is also legitimately the tallest building for human occupancy, just barely. Shanghai Tower is the honest runner-up: it achieves 583.5m of occupied structure in 632m of total height (7.7% vanity). Burj Khalifa achieves 585.4m in 828m (29.3% vanity). Two very different approaches to the same approximate honest-height outcome.
See also: methodology · vanity height · Honest 100