Abstract—During an earthquake, failure of structure starts at points of weakness. This weakness arises due to discontinuity in mass, stiffness and geometry of structure. The structures having this discontinuity are termed as Irregular structures. Irregular structures contribute a large portion of urban infrastructure. The object of the present work is to compare the seismic behavior of regular building with horizontally irregular buildings. For this purpose four multi-storey buildings are considered and provided with and without shear walls. Building 1 is regular plan, building 2 is of L shape, building 3 is of T shape and building 3 is of C shape in plan. To study the behavior the response parameters selected are lateral displacement and storey drift. All the buildings are assumed to be located in zone II, zone III, zone IV and zone V. For analysis STAAD. Pro software is used. Observation shows that for all the buildings considered, drift values follow a similar path along storey height with maximum value lying somewhere near the second to tenth storey. From drift point of view, in zone II, zone III and zone IV all the frames are within permissible limit, hence there is no requirement of shear wall in these zones. In zone V only building 4, i.e., C shape building exceeds permissible limits and requires shear wall throughout the height. And from displacement view point, only in zone II all the buildings are within permissible limit. In zone III building 1 slightly exceeds permissible value on 20 th  floor, but building 2, 3 and 4 requires shear wall to control the limit. In zone IV all the buildings exceeds limits largely. And in zone V all the buildings exceeds largely and requires shear wall throughout the height to control displacement limits. Present work provides a good source of information on the parameters lateral displacement and storey drift.