It uses an incremental native-code compiler to produce native binary files for the x86 (IA-32, x86-64), PowerPC, SPARC, and AArch64 processor architectures.

The first version of Chez Scheme was developed by R. Kent Dybvig and completed in 1984.

[6] It is free and open-source software released under an Apache License, version 2.0.

Programs written for Chez Scheme run unchanged in Petite Chez Scheme, as long as they do not depend on using the compiler (for example foreign function interface is only available in the compiler).

Chez Scheme has a windowing system and computer graphics package called the Scheme Widget Library, and is supported by the portable SLIB library.