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Space marines have the thunder hawk and stormraven, drop pods and all other manner of nonsense to get into combat.

Per the codex, chaos has... A land raider and a rhino. Thunderhawks, stormravens and drop pods were all used during the heresy, to say nothing of the chapters that turned renegade afterward. So why do chaos space marines have such limited transport options?

It also raises the question - canonically, how do chaos space marines get into battle? I've seen depictions of them marching straight through rifts in the warp onto a planet's surface but if that were the norm I can't imagine that the whole "eye of terror gate" thing would work.

I believe Chaos Marines can pass through warp rifts? The definitely could in the Space Marines video game.

On the issue of orbit to ground transport, Legion remnants will still have thunderhawks, but they don't tend to turn up in 40k scale anyway for either faction. The legions are also likely to have access to remnant stormbirds and other such things. Turncoat Chapters will have whatever ships and transports they can continue to operate after turning from the Imperium.

Random warbands on a raid would likely use whatever drop capable vehicle they can find and steal. This could be civilian shuttles or military transports or even taking a leaf out of the Ork book and just crash a starship in a vaguely controlled manner such that most of the passengers can still get out and fight afterwards.

Alternatively teleportation or warp magic provides a means.

The argument against Chaos troops using drop pods tends to devolve down to manufacturing capacity and why would they bother when they have other means. For loyalist Marines they can call on a much larger manufacturing base to supply such "disposable" items (i know they can be re-used, but there must be quite a high rate of knackered equipment).

Well, Chaos tend to stick to Dreadclaws when it comes to drop pod style insertion. Which, given they're also intended as ship to ship assault craft are much easier to recover during/after the fight.

They do also have Thunderhawks, though not in the numbers that loyalists would have. Maybe one or two for a particularly powerful warband.

As for other transports, they're not allowed in game as GW doesn't like the idea of CSM having all the shiny toys that SM get. Even though some of the time it doesn't make much sense fluff wise.

So all those marines that go renegade in more recent years just stockpile their other transports such as Razorbacks somewhere and throw away the access codes. The same with LR variants and assault cannons.

They have limited transport options because GW is secretly ran by The Emperor and he is sill butthurt over the whole heresy thing, therefore Chaos consistently must be inferior to their loyalists counterparts, the Emperor demands it.

In the background, both Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines have the same options. And Chaos can use the warp.

In game, it has been a long while since Chaos got some love. It is a second-class faction for GW. Space Marines (all sub-factions) are THE golden boys of the company, so they get all the shiny toys, every few months.

Which is more or less what 2x210 said.

I figure Chaos would use a lot of Imperial Navy vehicles such as Valkyries and other I.N. flyers. Hell, enough humans would be turning to Chaos it seems only logical that the Chaos marines would 'share' them.