This paper introduces two voltage-controlled memristor-based reactance-less oscillators with analytical and circuit simulations. Two different topologies which are R-M and M-R are discussed as a function of the reference voltage where the generalized formulas of the oscillation frequency and conditions for oscillation for each topology are derived. The effect of the reference voltage on the circuit performance is studied and validated through different examples using PSpice simulations. A memristor-based voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is introduced as an application for the proposed circuits which is nano-size and more efficient compared to the conventional VCOs. Copyright (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.