Shear walls are a type of structural system that provides lateral resistance to a building or structure and have relatively high stiffness and strength. However, since the energy dissipation is made within a limited part of the shear walls, they do not exhibit ductile behavior. Shear walls may be considered as an obstacle to make openings in the buildings. Coupled shear wall is one of the types of shear walls that has removed some of the problems encountered with shear walls. Yielding of link beams in the coupled shear walls may cause increase in energy dissipation and development of damage. Regular and uniform openings in the coupled shear walls reduce the architectural design limitations. As well as coupled shear walls, two other types of shear walls, namely slit shear walls and shear wall with upper connection have been investigated in this paper to develop energy dissipation along with the wall height. Such shear walls concerning the architectural design limitations are lower than the normal shear walls. In this research, the above-mentioned shear walls have been examined under the same conditions and a comparative study has been carried out concerning some parameters such as strength, stiffness, lateral displacement, cracking development and steel weight. Moreover, shear walls have been compared through considering the ratio of strength to steel weight and their ductility and the results revealed that slit and coupled shear walls showed more favorable performance.