New spectrophotometric procedures have been established for the quantitation of piroxicam and tenoxicam. The procedures are based on the reaction between the examined drug and alizarin (I), alizarin red S (II), alizarin yellow G (III) or quinalizarin (IV) producing ion-pair complexes which can be measured at the optimum wavelength. The optimization of the reaction conditions is investigated. Beer's law is obeyed in the concentration ranges 0.05-2.40 microg ml(-1), whereas optimum concentration as adopted from Ringbom plots was 0.12-2.25 microg ml(-1). The molar absorptivity, Sandell sensitivity, detection and quantification limits are also calculated. The correlation coefficient was >/=0.9990 (n=10) with a relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) of </=1.2, for ten determinations of 1.0 microg ml(-1). The methods are successfully applied to the determination of piroxicam and tenoxicam in their pharmaceutical formulations.