This paper presents a method to evaluate reliability for internal stability of reinforced soil structures using reliability based design optimization. Using limit equilibrium method and assuming the failure surface to be logarithmic spiral, analysis is conducted to maintain internal stability against both tensile and pullout failure of the reinforcements. Properties of backfill soil and strength of the geosynthetic reinforcement are considered as random variables. For the seismic conditions, reliability indices of all the geosynthetic layers in relation to tension and pullout failure modes are determined for different magnitudes of seismic accelerations both in the horizontal and vertical directions, surcharge load and design strength of the reinforcement. The efforts have been made to obtain the number of layers, pullout length and total length of the reinforcement at each level for the desired target reliability index values against tension and pullout modes of failure. The influence of horizontal and vertical earthquake acceleration, surcharge load, design strength of the reinforcement, coefficient of variation of soil friction angle and design strength of the reinforcement on number of layers, pullout length and total length of the reinforcement needed for the stability at each level is discussed. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.