The strong coupling from $e^+e^-$ → hadrons below charm threshold

We present our recent results on the extraction of the strong coupling, $\alpha_s$, from a new compilation of the hadronic $R$-ratio obtained from the available data for $e^+e^- \to {\rm hadrons}$. The determination uses all data up to $s=4$~GeV$^2$, where $s$ is the square of the center-of-mass energy. We obtain competitive values with only a small contamination from non-perturbative effects and with smaller theoretical uncertainties than the extractions from hadronic $\tau$ decays.