500,000 t1,100,000,000 lb
The Burj Khalifa weighs about 500,000 tonnes (roughly 1.1 billion lb) when empty. That is the figure on the official fact sheet from Emaar, the developer, but it is a rounded engineering estimate, since no skyscraper can be weighed. The fact sheet does not say whether it includes the foundation, whose concrete alone weighs more than 110,000 tonnes.
Emaar’s fact sheet lists the “weight of empty building” as 500,000 tonnes, presumably meaning the structure and its fixed parts, without people, furniture or anything else brought in. Engineers were using the same round number during construction: in 2008, Engineering News-Record described the tower as weighing “about half a million tons” on its piles.
Like every building weight, it is calculated from the drawings and material quantities, not measured. The fact sheet does not say whether the foundation counts. In metric that is 500,000 tonnes, or about 551,000 US tons and 1.1 billion lb.
Not neatly. The official figures are 330,000 m³ of concrete, 39,000 tonnes of steel reinforcement, 103,000 m² of glass and 15,500 m² of stainless steel cladding. The fact sheet also says the 45,000 m³ of foundation concrete weighs more than 110,000 tonnes, about 2.44 tonnes per cubic metre. At that rate, 330,000 m³ would weigh about 800,000 tonnes on its own, far more than the whole building.
The likely explanation is that 330,000 m³ covers the whole project, including the podium, basements and annexes around the tower. A 2010 trade article on the Putzmeister pumps that placed the tower’s high-strength concrete says they delivered about 165,000 m³ over 32 months. By our maths that is roughly 400,000 tonnes, and adding the foundation brings it to about 510,000 tonnes, close to the official figure.
The steel numbers wander too. Emaar’s own July 2007 press release gave 39,000 tonnes of rebar for the finished tower, yet said 62,200 tonnes had been used “so far”, and the same Putzmeister article gives 31,400 tonnes. So treat all of these as rounded totals.
The tower stands on a 3.7 m (12 ft) thick concrete raft, poured in four sections of at least 24 hours each, totalling 12,500 m³, which by our maths is about 30,500 tonnes of concrete. The raft sits on 192 bored concrete piles, 1.5 m across and buried more than 50 m deep (the structural engineers at SOM gave 194 in a 2008 paper). The piles hold the tower up mainly by friction with the surrounding rock, not by resting on a hard layer.
Each pile was designed for a working load of 3,000 tonnes, so together they could carry roughly 580,000 tonnes. A test pile held more than 6,000 tonnes. The groundwater is saltier than seawater, so the foundations have extra concrete cover, waterproofing and an electric cathodic protection system to keep the steel from corroding.
All that weight squeezes the ground a little. SOM expected up to about 80 mm (3 in) of settlement over time, and the geotechnical engineers predicted 45 to 62 mm. When the tower reached level 135, the measured average was 30 mm (1.2 in).
The tower is reinforced concrete up to level 156, with concrete as strong as C80 in the lower walls. Above that it switches to a lighter structural steel frame. The spire alone contains more than 4,000 tonnes of steel. It was assembled inside the building and pushed up into place with hydraulic jacks, and it rises more than 200 m.
The outside is covered by 24,348 cladding panels of reflective glass in aluminium frames. A typical panel, about 1.4 m by 3.3 m, weighs around 800 lb (363 kg), so by our rough maths the whole skin weighs about 9,000 to 11,000 tonnes, around 2% of the tower. Emaar says the aluminium alone weighs as much as five Airbus A380s.
About 1.1 billion lb, or about 551,000 US tons. That is the official 500,000 metric tonnes for the empty building, converted.
Yes, about one and a half times as heavy. The Empire State Building weighs about 331,000 tonnes, even though the Burj Khalifa is more than twice as tall.
It is 828 m (2,716.5 ft) to the tip of its spire, with more than 200 storeys, 160 of them habitable. It has been the world’s tallest building since it opened in January 2010.
Emaar gives 330,000 m³ (11.6 million cubic feet), which it compares to the weight of 100,000 elephants. That figure most likely includes the podium and annexes as well as the tower itself.
Its 192 concrete piles, each 1.5 m wide, reach more than 50 m (164 ft) below the ground. They support a solid concrete raft 3.7 m (12 ft) thick.
Last checked October 3, 2026.
