Vanadium metal, known as "industrial monosodium glutamate", is widely used in the fields of metallurgy, chemical engineering, aviation, energy, atomic energy, etc. Vanadium belongs to the rare reactive metals with a high melting point, and its production is difficult and costly. Currently, the main route for the production of high-purity V is the combination of the aluminothermic reduction of vanadium oxide and the vacuum melting purification of the crude V; however, this route is energy-intensive and low-yield. In order to reduce the production cost of metallic vanadium, many approaches to the production of crude vanadium have been proposed based on the thermodynamic stability of vanadium oxides and vanadium chlorides, including calciothermic reduction, magnesiothermic reduction, vacuum carbothermic reduction, silicothermic reduction, carbothermic reduction-nitridation-nitride thermal decomposition, molten salt electrolytic deoxidation, etc. The developed refining approaches includes molten salt electrolytic refining, iodide thermal decomposition, solid-state electro-transport purification, etc. This paper reviews the above methods comprehensively in terms of principles, technical features, effectiveness, and drawbacks. It is expected that this review will provide important guidance for the development and upgrading of the approaches for the production of high-purity V metal. It is believed that the application of vanadium will continue to expand with the achievement of high-end materials, which no doubt promotes the development of high-purity metallic vanadium production industry.