Fluvoxamine was reacted with chloranil in aqueous ethanolic medium buffered at pH 9 to yield a complex with maximum absorption at 347 nm. The estimated molar absorptivity and stability constant of the complex were (1.30 ± 0.03) × 104L mol−1cm−1and (1.7 ± 0.5) × 104L mol−1respectively. Absorbance at (δmax) was linearly related to concentration of fluvoaxamine over the range 2 to 25 μg ml−1with a detection limit of 0.4 μg ml−1. The slopes of log-log plots of initial concentrations of fluvoxamine or chloranil vs. initial rate of color development were both unity. When the reaction was applied to commercial tablets (Faverin ρ −50) labeled to contain 50 mg of fluvoxamine maleate per tablet, the mean percentage found was 100.4 ± 1.0. Recovery experiments after standard additions and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were carried out to investigate the accuracy and precision of the proposed method. Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography, (RP-HPLC), using μ-Bondapak C18(30 cm × 3.9 mm, i.d.) column, mobile phase consisting of 80% V/V-CH3CN + 20% v/v CH3COONa (0.01 M) buffer (adjusted to pH 3.5 with CH3COOH) and ultraviolet light detection was adopted for the quantitation of the commercial tablets. The results obtained by the RP-HPLC method were compared with those obtained by the proposed one.