The determination of $alpha_s$ by the ALPHA collaboration

We review the ALPHA collaboration strategy for obtaining the QCD coupling at high scale. In the three-flavor effective theory it avoids the use of perturbation theory at $alpha > 0.2$ and at the same time has the physical scales small compared to the cutoff $1/a$ in all stages of the computation. The result $Lambda_overline{MS}^{(3)}=332(14)$~MeV is translated to $alpha_overline{MS}(m_Z)=0.1179(10)(2)$ by use of (high order) perturbative relations between the effective theory couplings at the charm and beauty quark thresholds. The error of this perturbative step is discussed and estimated as $0.0002$.