Is it true that wooden skyscrapers are ultimately stronger than steel skyscrapers?

No, wood is not stronger than steel for skyscrapers.

This point comes up from time to time resulting in analyses done with individual wood fibers. The result is that in a number of species of wood the fibers have comparable tensile strength to mild steels. A lot of people took away from this that wood is as strong, and sometimes stronger, than steel.

Wrong! First, this is one of several properties comparable to steel. The others, compression and shear, are not. Additionally, the wood fibers are held in a matrix. While this is moderately good at compression it is bad at tensile and shear. So basically, should you subject wood to steel stresses it will break apart the matrix leaving only wood fibers. These same fibers aren’t rope-like but extend only a few inches each.

And after all of that, that doesn’t go into how wood is a natural material. Meaning that every specimen has differences, variations while steel comes as a monolithic homogenous material.

So, at the end of the day steel is stronger than wood in almost every case, and definitely those leading to skyscrapers.