Confusion: Prometheus /api/v1/alerts vs AlertManager /api/v1/alerts

[Ali Shah]

Hello mailing list!
I'd like to pull alerts that are currently firing out of Prometheus and would like to know which end point is the best-practice-recommendation. 

Theres a lot of documentation for using the AlertManagers HTTP endpoint, however, Prometheus has the same endpoint burrried in its HTTP API section of the docs. 

The raw data being pulled is similar. Yet AlertManager does have the very useful fingerprint field,  this,  seems to tell me what the Prometheus /api/v1/alerts  might contain duplicates whereas AlertManager's /api/v1/alerts (or v2) endpoint will not. Is this correct? Any other difference between these endpoints?

Thanks so much!

Ali