Abstract Street vending was a common feature in many towns in early modern Europe. However, peddlers and hawkers often operated outside the official framework, lacking permission from governments and guilds. The impact of their informal status has hitherto not featured very extensively in historical studies. This article assesses the impact of policing of street vendors by looking at familiar source materials in a new way. Rather than solely focusing on those people who were ultimately punished, this article investigates the full process of policing and prosecution of street traders in eighteenth-century Dutch towns. It exposes that apart from those receiving a formal punishment, many more traders could suffer from policing activities, and that particular groups of street vendors were more vulnerable than others due to the specific dynamics of local power relations. As such, this article provides new insights into policing and social control, while also offering wider lessons for our understanding of the relationship between the formal and informal economy in pre-industrial Europe.