One of the most important features of chemostats is that microorganisms can be grown in a physiological steady state under constant environmental conditions.

In this steady state, growth occurs at a constant specific growth rate and all culture parameters remain constant (culture volume, dissolved oxygen concentration, nutrient and product concentrations, pH, cell density, etc.).

This enables the experimenter to control the specific growth rate of the microorganisms by changing the speed of the pump feeding fresh medium into the vessel.

The chemostat is often used to gather steady state data about an organism in order to generate a mathematical model relating to its metabolic processes.

Chemostats can also be used to enrich for specific types of bacterial mutants in culture such as auxotrophs or those that are resistant to antibiotics or bacteriophages for further scientific study.

[citation needed] The chemostat also serves as an experimental model of continuous cell cultures in the biotechnological industry.