Reference · Measurement Standards
How we measure: where humans actually stand
Eight measurements per building. One ranking metric: the highest floor a human can occupy. The rest is context.
Fields tracked
8 per building
Ranking metric
Highest occupied floor
Primary source
Wikipedia / Wikidata
Last reviewed
2026-05-09
The eight height types we track
For every building in our database, we record eight distinct height measurements. Most buildings have data for all eight. Some only have five or six - where a field is empty, it means the data is not available or not applicable (buildings without spires have no spire height, for example).
Architectural Top
The highest architectural element of the building including any decorative spires but excluding communication antennas. This is the number used by the Council on Vertical Urbanism (formerly CTBUH) for its official rankings.
Unit: metres
Roof Height
The top of the building's structural roof, excluding spires, antennas, or decorative elements that extend above the roof plane.
Unit: metres
Highest Occupied Floor
The elevation of the highest floor that a human being can occupy: lease, visit, or stand on. This is the metric we rank by. We call it Honest Height.
Unit: metres
Observation Deck
The elevation of the highest publicly accessible observation deck or viewing platform. May be lower than the highest occupied floor if upper floors are private.
Unit: metres
Spire Height
The length of spire structure above the roof. Calculated as Architectural Top minus Roof Height.
Unit: metres
Antenna Height
The height of any communication antenna above the architectural top. Antennas are excluded from the CVU architectural top definition and tracked separately here.
Unit: metres
Vanity Height
The gap between the architectural top and the highest occupied floor. The measure of empty air that pads the ranking number. Calculated as Architectural Top minus Highest Occupied Floor.
Unit: metres and percentage (Vanity Ratio)
Floor Count
Total number of above-ground floors. Tracked for context but not used in primary rankings.
Unit: floors
Architectural top vs occupied ceiling
The global tall-building ranking is decided by architectural top. The Honest 100 is ranked by highest occupied floor. The same 100 buildings appear in both lists. The order differs because the metric differs.
A building at 632 m architectural top with a highest occupied floor of 578.5 m ranks differently than a building at 541.3 m architectural top with a highest occupied floor of 386.5 m. By architectural top, the first building is 90 m taller. By honest height, the difference is 192 m. The ranking gap is not an anomaly - it is the point.
Ranking formulas
Honest Height ranking = sort buildings descending by Highest Occupied Floor (m)
Architectural Top ranking = sort buildings descending by Architectural Top (m)
When these two lists disagree, the gap is measured in metres and reported as Vanity Ratio. The disagreement is the editorial story.
Vanity Ratio explained
Vanity Ratio is the percentage of a building's architectural top that is non-occupiable. It is the single most useful number we publish per building. A building with a 30% Vanity Ratio has spent nearly a third of its headline height on architecture its occupants will never visit.
Formula
Vanity Ratio (%) = (Architectural Top - Highest Occupied Floor) / Architectural Top × 100
Interpretation guide
Read the full definition at /glossary/vanity-height.
Data sources
Our primary data sources are Wikipedia and Wikidata. For buildings where Wikipedia data is thin, incomplete, or contested, we research primary sources: developer announcements, architect's office publications, and local authority planning records. We do not use CTBUH's Skyscraper Center database as a primary source.
Where our numbers differ from CTBUH/CVU figures, the difference is usually in the Highest Occupied Floor field - CTBUH publishes this data but does not rank by it. We do.
Update cadence
Building data does not change often. Observation deck closures, building sales, and floor-use reclassifications are the main triggers for updates. We review data on a rolling basis and note corrections with a dated correction notice on the relevant building profile.
Disagreements with CVU rankings
Our rankings and the Council on Vertical Urbanism rankings diverge in two ways: (1) we rank by occupied height, not architectural top; (2) we include buildings the CVU excludes for technical reasons, and exclude buildings the CVU includes for technical reasons.
We are not a replacement for the CVU database. We are an independent editorial dataset that answers a different question: not "which building reaches highest" but "which building do you ride an elevator the highest in."