ARLBench: Flexible and Efficient Benchmarking for Hyperparameter Optimization in Reinforcement Learning
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Abstract (arXiv)
Hyperparameters are a critical factor in reliably training well-performing reinforcement learning (RL) agents. Unfortunately, developing and evaluating automated approaches for tuning such hyperparameters is both costly and time-consuming. As a result, such approaches are often only evaluated on a single domain or algorithm, making comparisons difficult and limiting insights into their generalizability. We propose ARLBench, a benchmark for hyperparameter optimization (HPO) in RL that allows comparisons of diverse HPO approaches while being highly efficient in evaluation. To enable research into HPO in RL, even in settings with low compute resources, we select a representative subset of HPO tasks spanning a variety of algorithm and environment combinations. This selection allows for generating a performance profile of an automated RL (AutoRL) method using only a fraction of the compute previously necessary, enabling a broader range of researchers to work on HPO in RL. With the extensive and large-scale dataset on hyperparameter landscapes that our selection is based on, ARLBench is an efficient, flexible, and future-oriented foundation for research on AutoRL. Both the benchmark and the dataset are available at https://github.com/automl/arlbench.
Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 49 of its 75 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Sep 2024.
Builds on
49 of 75 references.
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 1.
3 papers.
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- 2026Efficient Heteroscedastic Bayesian Optimization for Risk-Aware AutoRL29 Jul 2026
- 2025Deep Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Algorithm Configuration: A Case Study on Optimizing OneMax with the (1+(λ,λ))-GA3 Dec 2025
- 2025ULTHO: Ultra-Lightweight yet Efficient Hyperparameter Optimization in Deep Reinforcement Learning8 Mar 2025