To date, practical and scholarly work on the interaction between formal and informal social protection has focused on crowding in and crowding out of informal social protection by formal social protection. However, little is known about the relationship between both forms of social protection in conditions where one form of social protection is more effective than the other, or both forms of social protection are effective and ineffective. This article empirically examines how both forms of social protection interact and conceptualises this relation under these conditions by drawing on ninety semi-structured interviews with households across fourteen cities in Pakistan. The study theorises the interaction of formal and informal social protection in five different ways. Based on this, the article argues for further research to explore the relationship between formal and informal social protection in different contexts for building scholarship and policy interventions to improve the lives of the vulnerable.