Introduction: The motion of many real world systems is described by essentially non-linear and non-stationary models. A number of approaches to the control of such plants are based on constructing an internal model of non-stationarity. However, the non-stationarity model parameters can vary widely, leading to more errors. It is only assumed in this paper that the change rate of the object parameters is limited, while the initial uncertainty can be quite large. Purpose: Analysis of adaptive control algorithms for non-linear and timevarying systems with an explicit reference model, synthesized by the speed gradient method. Results: An estimate was obtained for the maximum deviation of a closed-loop system solution from the reference model solution. It is shown that with sufficiently slow changes in the parameters and a small initial uncertainty, the limit error in the system can be made arbitrarily small. Systems designed by the direct approach and systems based on the identification approach are both considered. The procedures for the synthesis of an adaptive regulator and analysis of the synthesized system are illustrated by an example. Practical relevance: The obtained results allow us to build and analyze a broad class of adaptive systems with reference models under non-stationary conditions.