If you have been in the audiobook, e-learning, or meme creation space for more than five years, you know exactly who Eric is.
Long before the era of ElevenLabs and OpenAI’s whisper-smooth tones, there was Ivona Text to Speech. And within that suite of voices, Eric (often paired with Joanna) was the undisputed king of natural-sounding British English.
Even though Amazon shut down the standalone Ivona service years ago, Eric’s voice refuses to die. Here is the story of that iconic voice and exactly how you can still use it today.
Many TTS browser extensions allow you to select "Amazon Polly" as the engine. Look for the Brian voice specifically. ivona eric text to speech
Some APK files of “Ivona Text-to-Speech” (including Eric) circulate on forums like XDA Developers. Be warned: These are unsupported, may contain malware, and violate Ivona’s original EULA. Proceed with caution.
If you cannot find Eric legally, consider these close substitutes:
Ivona’s quality inevitably caught the eye of Big Tech. In 2013, Amazon acquired Ivona Software. The Golden Age of Digital Voice: Remembering Ivona’s
At the time, Amazon was heavily pushing into the Kindle ecosystem and laying the groundwork for what would eventually become Alexa. Ivona became the hidden engine behind Amazon’s "Voicecast" feature, allowing Kindle users to switch from reading to listening. If you listened to a Kindle book read by a British male voice between 2013 and 2020, you were almost certainly listening to Eric.
Under Amazon, Eric also found his way into smart home devices, early Alexa iterations (in regions where specific local voices weren't yet rolled out), and various Amazon Web Services (AWS) text-to-speech APIs used by developers worldwide.
Eric speaks with a standard Received Pronunciation (RP) accent—often called "the Queen’s English." However, it lacks the extreme stiffness of older TTS voices. It is contemporary enough for YouTube narrations but formal enough for corporate e-learning. Microsoft Azure – Ryan (en-GB) – Neural, free
How does the original Eric stack up against 2024’s leading TTS voices?
| Feature | Ivona Eric (Legacy) | Amazon Polly (Brian/Matthew) | Google Wavenet (en-GB) | ElevenLabs (British voices) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Accent | British RP | British/American | British (various) | British (customizable) | | Naturalness | Very good (for 2013) | Excellent (neural) | Excellent (neural) | Superb (AI cloning) | | Emotion | Limited (neutral) | Moderate | Moderate | High (anger, whisper, joy) | | Offline use | Yes (full local) | No (cloud only) | No (cloud only) | No (cloud only) | | Price | One-time (was ~$45) | Pay per request | Pay per request | Subscription | | Latency | Instant (local) | 200–500ms | 200–500ms | 500+ ms |
Bottom line: Modern neural voices are objectively more expressive and natural, but they require internet and ongoing fees. Eric’s biggest advantage remains offline, instant, perpetual access.