We estimate the QCD effective charge $alpha_s$ in the low-energy region by exploiting the conventional meson spectrum within a relativistic quantum-field model based on analytic confinement. The ladder Bethe-Salpeter equation is solved for the masses
of two-quark bound states. We found a new, independent and specific infrared-finite behavior of QCD coupling below energy scale 1 GeV. Particularly, an infrared-fixed point is extracted at $alpha_s(0)simeq 0.757$ for confinement scale $Lambda=345$ MeV. As an application, we estimate masses of some intermediate and heavy mesons and obtain results in reasonable agreement with recent experimental data.
