A simple, accurate, rapid and sensitive spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of tramadol hydrochloride in pharmaceutical formulations. The method was based on the formation of chloroform extractable complex of tramadol hydrochloride with wool fast blue, which shows absorbance maxima at 590 nm against the reagent blank treated similarly. The method obeys Beer's law in the concentration ranges of 50-250 µg/mL. Validation studies are statistically significant as all the statistical parameters are within the acceptance range (% RSD< 2.0 and S.D. < 2.0) for both accuracy and precision study. High recovery and low % RSD reveals the reliability of the method for quantitative study of the proposed method in tablet formulation. The proposed method is simple, rapid accurate, precise, reproducible and economic and can be used for routine quantitative analysis of tramadol hydrochloride in pure and tablet dosage form.