In this paper, we investigate a master–slave synchronization scheme of two n-dimensional nonautonomous chaotic systems coupled by sinusoidal state error feedback control, where parameter mismatch exists between the external harmonic excitation of master system and that of slave one. A concept of synchronization with error bound is introduced due to parameter mismatch, and then the bounds of synchronization error are estimated analytically. Some synchronization criteria are firstly obtained in the form of matrix inequalities by the Lyapunov direct method, and then simplified into some algebraic inequalities by the Gerschgorin disc theorem. The relationship between the estimated synchronization error bound and system parameters reveals that the synchronization error can be controlled as small as possible by increasing the coupling strength or decreasing the magnitude of mismatch. A three-dimensional gyrostat system is chosen as an example to verify the effectiveness of these criteria, and the estimated synchronization error bounds are compared with the numerical error bounds. Both the theoretical and numerical results show that the present sinusoidal state error feedback control is effective for the synchronization. Numerical examples verify that the present control is robust against amplitude or phase mismatch.