The widely accepted importance of energy efficiency in the building sector is continuously acknowledged by the engineering and research community, as proven by the quantity and diversification of relevant modeling proposals in literature. It is often difficult to collect and assess this plethora of approaches and sometimes the diversity of the features of the available options makes it hard to decide what is the most convenient for the purpose required. This work presents a comprehensive analysis of the most important results today, along with their various classification and assessment approaches for modeling energy building consumption. A critical review of the limitations of the different existing approaches is conducted, and open research challenges are also highlighted. Finally, a horizontal and selective assessment of their suitability according to a descriptive set of qualitative comparison contexts and parameters is provided. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.