Two simple, rapid and sensitive extractive spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the assay of cinnarizine (CNR) in pure and pharmaceutical formulations. The methods are based on the formation of chloroform soluble ion-association complexes of CNR with thymol blue (TB) and with cresol red (CR) in NaOAc-AcOH buffer of pH 3.6 for TB and in KCl-HCl buffer of pH 1.6 for CR with absorption maxima at 405 nm and at 403 nm for TB and CR, respectively. Reaction conditions were optimized to obtain the maximum color intensity. The systems obeyed Beer's law in the range of 0.6-15.8 and 0.8-16.6 mg mL -1 for TB and CR, respectively. Various analytical parameters have been evaluated and the results have been validated by statistical data.