The organization currently ranks Burj Khalifa in Dubai as the tallest at 828 m (2,717 ft).[3] The CTBUH only recognizes buildings that are complete however, and some buildings included within the lists in this article are not considered finished by the CTBUH.

In 1996, as a response to the dispute as to whether the Petronas Towers or the Sears Tower was taller,[4] the council listed and ranked buildings in four categories:

height to structural or architectural top;
height to floor of highest occupied floor;
height to top of roof (removed as category in November 2009);[5] and
height to top of any part of the building.
Spires are considered integral parts of the architectural design of buildings, to which changes would substantially change the appearance and design of the building, whereas antennas may be added or removed without such consequences. The Petronas Towers, with their spires, are thus ranked higher than the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) with its antennas, despite the Petronas Towers' lower roofs and lower highest point.

Until 1996, the world's tallest building was defined by the height to the top of the tallest architectural element, including spires but not antennae. This led to a rivalry between the Bank of Manhattan Building and the Chrysler Building. The Bank of Manhattan Building employed only a short spire and was 282.5 m (927 ft) tall and had a much higher top occupied floor (the second category in the 1996 criteria for tallest building). In contrast, the Chrysler Building employed a very large 38.1 m (125 ft) spire secretly assembled inside the building to claim the title of world's tallest building with a total height of 318.9 m (1,046 ft), although it had a lower top occupied floor and a shorter height when both buildings' spires were excluded.

Upset by Chrysler's victory, Shreve & Lamb, the consulting architects of the Bank of Manhattan Building, wrote a newspaper article claiming that their building was actually the tallest, since it contained the world's highest usable floor. They pointed out that the observation deck in the Bank of Manhattan Building was nearly 30 m (100 ft) above the top floor in the Chrysler Building, whose surpassing spire was strictly ornamental and inaccessible.[6]

At present, the Burj Khalifa tops the list by some margin, regardless of which criterion is applied.[