When is protest repressed? In recent decades, scholars have parsed this question in context of protest policing in mature Western democracies. Their findings lend themselves to the conclusion that the institutional constraints of democracy are a key factor in mediating repression. Far less is known about when governments repress protest in non-democracies, and in particular, what threatens non-democratic regimes and what factors, if any, inhibit repression. We examine protests in Egypt against the military coup of July 2013, primarily by the Muslim Brothers and their allies, using interviews with protesters along with an original event catalogue of over two thousand protest events. Results show that larger protests and protests that occurred in ‘sensitive spaces’ – public squares, government buildings and major thoroughfares – were disproportionately more likely to be attacked, while protests that occurred during the holy month of Ramadan, or those organized by women, were significantly less vulnerable to repression. We also find strong evidence for protestor adaptation determining which protest events were repressed. Taken together, the paper’s findings have important implications for our understanding both of the trajectory of the 25th January Egyptian Revolution, but also for what constrains and enables repression and mobilization in the wider MENA region and beyond.