The energy balance of buildings depends greatly on the type of external fencing, including translucent. The article presents a brief description of different types of daylighting systems that have different optical, geometric and thermal characteristics. The change in these characteristics affects the quality of lighting in the room, as well as determines the operating costs associated with losses and heat flows into the building through translucent fences. The task of comparing and choosing the optimal daylighting system should take into account all of the above factors. The authors propose a complex comparison criterion that takes into account thermal, optical, operational properties and capital costs. The structure of the proposed criterion allows you to add new indicators or remove irrelevant for a particular consumer comparison parameters. The method is composed and the calculated dependences for determining the numerical value of individual indicators included in the complex criterion are given. All parameters included in the proposed criterion have no dimension. This makes it possible to reduce the dependence of the calculations on changes in current energy prices.