Skyscrapers
of the world.
A skyscraper is more than a tall building, and where the line falls is a question with a published answer rather than an opinion. This section covers how SKYDB classifies and measures them, and links into the searchable record of every skyscraper the database holds.
38,894 skyscrapers indexed worldwide, from low-100 m benchmarks up to the 828 m record holder. Records cover heights, construction status, owners, and architects where known. SKYDB editors add sources when available.
A skyscraper is, by the working definition adopted across the field, an inhabited building of 100 meters or more in architectural height. The label is one of architecture's youngest - it was coined in late-19th-century Chicago for the first generation of steel-framed towers that broke decisively above the masonry skyline - and it has been stretched, contested and refined in every decade since.
What started as a North American real-estate experiment is today a worldwide form. The catalog on SKYDB spans early steel pioneers, the post-war curtain-wall corporate icons, the Asian boom from the 1990s onward, and the current generation of slender residential super-towers and supertall mixed-use stacks. Records can include architectural height, structural height, occupied levels, completion year, primary use, owners, architects, and status history.
This page is a doorway. Below you will find the numbers behind the canon - how many skyscrapers exist, how many are currently under construction, where they cluster, and which buildings sit at the top of the height ranking. From any tile you can drill into the underlying records, edit what's wrong, or follow a country into its own skyline page.
The pipeline, right now
Click any tile to open the full list in /search/.
Where the skylines are
Top 10 countries by completed and under-construction skyscrapers.
