Mastodon leads in popularity with 50,197 stars vs 29,377 stars for Hey. The 71% higher star count indicates stronger community adoption. In terms of developer contributions, Mastodon has 7,483 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.

Hey and Mastodon are moving at much the same rate, losing 6 stars and adding 93 stars respectively over the last 30 days (0% vs +0.2%). Neither is pulling away from the other on momentum alone.

Mastodon shows more recent development activity with its last commit 3 hours ago, while Hey was last updated 3 months ago. This suggests Mastodon is being more actively maintained.

Both tools share common technology foundations, being built with JavaScript, CSS, Typescript, JSX. However, they differ in their additional technology choices: Mastodon leverages SCSS, Ruby, Rails.

Mastodon has been in development longer, starting 10 years ago, compared to Hey which began 4 years ago. This 6.2-year head start suggests Mastodon may have more mature features and established processes.

The projects use different licenses: Hey is licensed under GPL-3.0 while Mastodon uses AGPL-3.0. Consider the licensing requirements when choosing for your project.

Both tools serve similar use cases in Decentralized Social Networks. However, they also have distinct specializations: Hey also focuses on Web3 Platforms.

Mastodon provides self-hosting options for complete data control and customization, while Hey may be primarily cloud-based or require different deployment approaches.