Proliferations of green, brown and red algae appear in shallow sandy bays in North Brittany (France), and they represent a real economic constraint for the affected communities. In addition to the nuisance for residents and tourist activity, the communities must carry out systematic collection. The collected algae are spread on agricultural land spreading or composted, but these solutions reach their limits rapidly, bringing little added value to the collected algae. Seaweeds are potentially excellent sources of bioactive metabolites that could represent useful leads in the development of new functional ingredients in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. The aim of this study was to propose the use of an enzyme-assisted extraction as a tool to improve the extraction efficiency of antiviral compounds from three invasive French seaweeds. We selected the red Solieria chordalis, the green Ulva sp. and the brown Sargassum muticum as models for these experiments. In comparison with water extraction at 50 °C for the same time of treatment, enzymatic hydrolysis increased the yields. The data suggest the potential of enzymatic hydrolysis for producing active fractions in the function of the algal biomass, the behaviour of the cell wall, the selectivity and the action of the enzyme. Enzymatic hydrolysis appeared less effective for polyphenol recovery, but was a promising softer technique for recovering proteins, neutral sugars, uronic acids and sulphate groups. The solvent-free process, higher extraction rate and higher yields, coupled to time-saving and lower cost, make this method economical and sustainable. By using a cell viability assay, all hydrolysate fractions tested were shown to be non-toxic to Vero cells. After 3 days of treatment, no microscopically visible alteration of normal cell morphology was observed even at 500 μg mL−1. S. chordalis extracts have an effective antiviral activity with EC50 between 23.0 and 101.1 μg mL−1 at a multiplicity of infection of 0.001 ID50/cells; 100 % and 98 % cellular protection were obtained for 500 μg mL−1 of hydrolysate extracts carbohydrase C3 and blank, respectively. Other extracts from S. chordalis inhibited viral production less effectively.