Provides guidance for training LLMs with reinforcement learning using verl (Volcano Engine RL). Use when implementing RLHF, GRPO, PPO, or other RL algorithms for LLM post-training at scale with flexible infrastructure…
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name: verl-rl-training
description: Provides guidance for training LLMs with reinforcement learning using verl (Volcano Engine RL). Use when implementing RLHF, GRPO, PPO, or other RL algorithms for LLM post-training at scale with flexible infrastructure backends.
version: 1.0.0
author: Orchestra Research
license: MIT
tags: [Reinforcement Learning, RLHF, GRPO, PPO, Post-Training, Distributed Training]
dependencies: [verl>=0.3.0, torch>=2.0.0, ray>=2.41.0, vllm>=0.8.2, transformers>=4.40.0]
---
# verl: Volcano Engine Reinforcement Learning for LLMs
verl is a flexible, efficient, and production-ready RL training library for large language models from ByteDance's Seed team. It implements the HybridFlow framework (EuroSys 2025) and powers models like Doubao-1.5-pro achieving O1-level performance on math benchmarks.
## When to Use verl
**Choose verl when you need:**
- Production-ready RL training at scale (tested up to 671B parameters)
- Flexibility to swap backends (FSDP ↔ Megatron-LM ↔ vLLM ↔ SGLang)
- Support for multiple RL algorithms (PPO, GRPO, RLOO, REINFORCE++, DAPO)
- Multi-turn rollout with tool calling for agentic workflows
- Vision-language model RL training
**Consider alternatives when:**
- You need Megatron-native training → use **slime** or **miles**… load the full skill through Skill Me