In this work, we report the formation of porous Li2MTi3O8 (M = Zn, Co) flakes (hereafter referred to as f-Li2MTi3O8) via a facile one-step solution-combustion in less than 10 min. As anodes for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the synthesized f-Li2MTi3O8 exhibits high reversible charge–discharge capacity, great cycling stability and high rate performance. These results can be attributed to the intrinsic characteristics of spinel Li2MTi3O8 flakes, in which a porous framework could provide a diffusion space for lithium ion insertion into and extraction from the anode material, resulting in excellent cycle performance, even cycling at high rate of 2000 mA g−1.