The present study describes two simple, rapid, selective and cost-effective spectrophotometric methods for the determination of dothiepin hydrochloride (DOTH), an antidepressant drug, in bulk drug and pharmaceutical formulations. The first method (method A) is based on the formation of yellow colored ion-pair complex between DOTH and alizarin red S (ARS) in acid medium which was extracted into dichloromethane and the absorbance was measured at 445 nm. The second method (method B) is based on the breaking of the yellow DOTH–ARS ion-pair complex in alkaline medium followed by the measurement of the violet color free dye at 570 nm. Under the optimized conditions, Beer’s law is obeyed over the concentration ranges of 2.50–55.0 and 1.00–35.0 μg ml−1 DOTH for method A and method B, respectively. The molar absorptivity, Sandell’s sensitivity, detection and quantification limits are also calculated. The methods were validated for intra-day and inter-day accuracy and precision; selectivity and robustness and ruggedness. The proposed methods were applied successfully to the determination of DOTH in pure drug and commercial formulations. The accuracy and reliability of the proposed methods were further established by parallel determination by the official method and also by recovery studies via standard addition technique.