Vibrations in buildings impact the behaviour of structures and humans, for sources defined as internal or external to the building. Besides the comparison of vibrations to fixed limits, the choice of a relevant indicator is unavoidable and this indicator is defined differently according to the selected reference text. Various standards (or directives similar to standards) exist and this paper focuses on the most important and the most used ones, for ground vibrations induced to buildings or for human exposure inside buildings. In addition to the interest of comparing values to well-defined and well-known limits, the knowledge of these standards allows the use of suitable indicators. Various vibration signals are used, from a simple harmonic signal to complex vibrations generated by railway traffic, in order to present a relevant analysis of severity of each norm. It turns out that criteria noticeably vary from one reference to another one, and that the thresholds are different for each standard.