Constrained Group Relative Policy Optimization
TL;DR
This work introduces Constrained GRPO, a Lagrangian-based extension of GRPO for constrained policy optimization, and addresses the coupling induced by reward scalarization by scalarizing standardized advantages rather than rewards.
Abstract
Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) remains the dominant critic-free approach for fine-tuning LLMs and VLMs, but its compatibility with constrained policy optimization (e.g. for safety-critical domains) has not been carefully examined. In this work, we introduce Constrained GRPO, a Lagrangian-based extension of GRPO for constrained policy optimization. We show that the standard practice of scalarizing rewards before normalization introduces a critical Lagrangian-specific failure mode: GRPO's within-group normalization makes constrained optimization highly sensitive to how multi-component learning signals are aggregated. We show that scalarizing rewards before normalization introduces shared-denominator coupling, so that changing one multiplier alters not only the emphasis on its corresponding constraint, but also the relative weighting of the reward and other constraints. We address this with a simple but crucial modification: scalarizing standardized advantages rather than rewards. This yields a better-conditioned update by addressing the coupling induced by reward scalarization, resulting in better-behaved multiplier dynamics and more stable constraint enforcement in practice. Empirically, across a controlled gridworld, a real-world autonomous driving benchmark, and a mathematical reasoning task, Constrained GRPO consistently achieves better adherence to specified constraints while maintaining or improving task performance.
