The purpose of the research presented in this paper was to investigate the effectiveness of several conventional, multi-modal and adaptive pushover procedures. In particular, an extensive numerical study was performed considering eight RC frames characterized by a variable number of storeys and different properties in terms of regularity in elevation. The results of pushover analyses were compared with those of nonlinear dynamic analyses, which were carried out considering different earthquake records and increasing values of earthquake intensity. The study was performed with reference to base shear-top displacement curves and to different storey response parameters. The obtained results allowed a direct comparison between the pushover procedures, which in general were able to give a fairly good estimate of seismic demand with a tendency to better results for lower frames. The advanced procedures, in particular the multi-modal pushover, provided an improvement of the results, more evident for the irregular frames.