Abstract:  Following the publication of his Foundations of Geometry in 1899, David Hilbert engaged in a well-known debate with Frege which concerned (amongst other things) the question of whether the consistency of a set of axioms entails the existence of a model in which they are satisfied.   I will consider this dimension of the so-called Frege-Hilbert controversy in light of the subsequent work in logic and philosophy which it inspired.  I will argue for the following claims: i) the controversy both anticipated Gödel’s completeness theorem and shaped its reception (in which Bernays played a central role); ii) Frege was right to maintain that consistency checking is as difficult as it can be; ii) Hilbert was also right to maintain that given consistency,  demonstrating the existence of a model is as easy as it can be.