How tall is Burj Khalifa?

The official height: 828 meters to the architectural top

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai stands 828 m (2,717 ft) tall, the figure recorded by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the body that keeps the world's skyscraper rankings. That number is the height to architectural top, measured from the tower's lowest significant open-air pedestrian entrance to the top of its spire. Since the tower was finished in 2010, no completed building has come close to it. The next tallest, Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, is about 150 m shorter.

You will also see 829.8 m (2,723 ft) quoted. That is the CTBUH height to tip, the highest point of the structure whatever it is made of. The gap of under 2 m comes from a small element above the spire's architectural finish. For comparisons, rankings and the 3D figure on this page we use the architectural height of 828 m, because that is the number CTBUH uses to rank buildings.

How skyscraper height is measured, and why it matters here

The CTBUH criteria give three measurements for every tall building, and the Burj Khalifa shows clearly why they can differ so much.

1. Architectural top counts spires, because they are part of the design, but leaves out antennas, flagpoles, signs and other equipment that can be added or taken down.
2. Highest occupied floor is the floor level of the top space people can actually use.
3. Tip is simply the highest point of the structure.

Every measurement starts at the finished floor of the lowest entrance that is mostly above grade, opens straight onto the outdoors and is used by occupants or visitors. Sunken plazas and car-park entrances don't count, so a developer can't add height by digging a grand entrance below street level.

The council also sets size classes. A supertall is 300 m or more and a megatall is 600 m or more. The Burj Khalifa clears the megatall line by 228 m. It also meets the council's test for a building rather than a tower: at least half of its height must be occupiable. That is why it is ranked alongside offices and apartment towers, not alongside telecom masts like Tokyo Skytree.

The spire question

The Burj Khalifa has the largest gap between occupied height and architectural height of any major building. With its highest occupied floor at 584.5 m, the top 243 m or so is a tapering steel spire with almost no usable space. CTBUH research on "vanity height" singled out the tower, and Wikipedia's summary of that research notes the spire alone would rank as a skyscraper in many cities. Critics treat this as padding. Supporters point out that the spire grows out of the central concrete core and was part of the design from the start, which is exactly what the CTBUH rules allow.

Design: a Y-shaped plan built to beat the wind

At 828 m, the main structural challenge is not gravity but wind. The tower was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), with Adrian Smith as design partner and SOM as structural engineer, and it uses what the firm calls a buttressed core. A hexagonal concrete core sits at the center, and three wings branch out from it in a Y shape. Each wing has its own concrete core and perimeter columns, and the wings brace one another and the center, which makes the whole tower very stiff against twisting.

As the building rises, the wings step back one by one in a spiral pattern. SOM explains that because the width changes at every setback, the wind meets a new shape at each tier, which keeps it from building up regular swirling vortices that would make the tower sway. The firm says the form draws on a regional desert flower and on patterns in Islamic architecture. The setbacks were also arranged so that columns above line up with walls below. That gave the structure a continuous load path and spared the builders slow column transfers.

The structural materials follow the height. CTBUH describes the tower as steel over concrete: reinforced concrete core and columns carry the lower and middle floors, and steel takes over near the top and in the spire.

Construction timeline and the height record

The project began as Burj Dubai, with Emaar Properties as developer and Samsung C&T as main contractor. Excavation started in January 2004, the superstructure began rising in March 2005, and the developer famously kept the final height secret. In mid-2008 Emaar would only say the tower was already taller than 636 m.

At the opening the tower took its present name, honoring Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE president and ruler of Abu Dhabi, whose government had supported Dubai through the 2009 debt crisis. The opening ceremony included a display of about 10,000 fireworks. That led to the New Year's Eve shows that have been held at the tower every year since.

The previous world's tallest building, Taipei 101, stands 508 m to its architectural top. The Burj Khalifa beat it by 320 m, a margin almost equal to the full height of the Eiffel Tower (330 m). CTBUH also notes the Burj Khalifa was the first building in more than forty years to be the world's tallest freestanding structure of any kind. The Empire State Building had lost that wider title to Moscow's Ostankino TV tower in 1967.

Construction records

Beyond overall height, the project set several engineering records:

• Concrete pumped to about 606 m, reaching the 156th floor, the highest vertical concrete pump for a building at the time.
• Roughly 330,000 m³ of concrete and 55,000 tonnes of reinforcing bar, with a foundation of 192 piles under more than 45,000 m³ of concrete.
• An elevator travel distance of about 504 m, among the longest single elevator runs ever installed. CTBUH lists 58 elevators with top speeds of 10 m/s.
• About 22 million worker-hours, with around 7,500 skilled workers on site at the 2008 peak. The project was also criticized over the pay and housing of its mostly South Asian migrant workforce.

How the Burj Khalifa compares with other giants

Because the tower is so much taller than anything else, comparisons help more than the bare number. The table uses heights from this site's landmark data. You can stack any of them in the 3D height comparison tool.

Some useful mental images follow. The highest occupied floor alone (584.5 m) is taller than One World Trade Center's architectural top. Stand the Eiffel Tower on top of the Empire State Building and the pair, at 711 m, still falls more than 100 m short. Compared with people, the tower is about 450 times the height of a 6-foot (183 cm) adult. Even Yao Ming, at 229 cm, would have to be stacked about 360 times to reach the top of the spire.

The Burj Khalifa is still less than a tenth of the height of Mount Everest, though. The summit of Everest is 8,848.86 m above sea level, so a hiker on Everest at the elevation of the Burj Khalifa's spire tip would barely have started.

Visiting: observation decks and their heights

Most visitors see the city from one of three public levels, each set well below the architectural top.

The level-148 deck, recorded by CTBUH as the tower's observatory at 555.7 m, was the world's highest observation deck from 2014 until Shanghai Tower opened a higher one in 2016. The lounge levels near 585 m, opened in 2019, take the record back for the Burj Khalifa in the "highest lounge" category. The At.mosphere restaurant on level 122, at about 442 m, is often listed as one of the world's highest restaurants. Prices, opening hours and ticket types change often, so check the operator's official site before you go.

From the top decks you can see across Downtown Dubai to the Persian Gulf and the Palm Jumeirah on clear days. In summer, haze and dust often cut visibility in the middle of the day, which is why sunrise and late-afternoon slots usually sell out first. The air at the top is noticeably cooler as well: estimates put it about 6 °C below street level.

Living and working at 828 m

The tower is a mixed-use building, not just an observation post. CTBUH lists about 900 apartments, a hotel of around 304 rooms, offices and 2,957 parking spaces across a gross floor area of more than 309,000 m². Keeping a building this tall clean is a job in itself. The facade has more than 24,000 windows, and a full exterior cleaning by rope-access crews and gondolas takes a team of about three dozen workers several months.

Such a tall structure also attracts record-seekers. In 2010 two BASE jumpers made an authorized leap from a platform on the 160th floor at 672 m. In 2014 a French duo jumped from the top of the pinnacle itself at 828 m.

Will anything overtake it?

For now, the Burj Khalifa's lead looks secure. Merdeka 118 (678.9 m), completed in 2023, took second place with a spire of its own. Shanghai Tower (632 m) stays the tallest building with a more conventional crown. The only project that clearly aims higher is Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, designed by Adrian Smith's later firm to pass 1,000 m. Its construction stopped for several years and has only recently resumed, and until it is finished and certified by CTBUH, the Burj Khalifa remains the reference point. You can browse the full ranking of buildings, towers and natural heights in our tallest lists, or see all the structures we cover on the landmarks hub.