How much? Who cares!

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday shrugged off a shocking study that found his free childcare plan will cost taxpayers billions more than anticipated — as he and Gov. Kathy Hochul touted the popularity of their 2-K pilot program.

Mamdani and Hochul announced that offers had been made to fill the 2,000 available seats, out of more than 7,500 families who applied for the first-of-its-kind free preschool program for 2-year-olds launching this fall in select neighborhoods.

But the joint press conference, at BedRock Preschool in The Bronx, came a day after the nonpartisan Center for New York City Affairs found that growing universal childcare to cover all city kids from 6 weeks old to five years old — as Mamdani as promised — would cost $9 billion annually.

That’s a far cry from the $6 billion Mamdani advertised for the initiative, according to the study, which said ramping up free childcare would require adding some 10,000 seats and hiring some 23,000 workers.

Neither Mamdani nor Hochul seemed particularly concerned with the reported cost overrun, nor with explaining how the massive gap would be closed other than levying additional taxes on the wealthy, the mayoral administration’s go-to piggy bank thus far.

Asked about the study, Hizzoner touted the “partnership” with Hochul, reminiscing about the governor allocating an extra $1.2 billion in state funding to fuel the 2-K pilot and build up existing free pre-K and 3-K programs.

After recapping the particulars of the initiatives and sharing a word-salad anecdote about parents being forced to travel miles from their home to find childcare, Mamdani finally offered an oblique answer.

“And what I mean by that is that today we have families across the city spending, as the governor said, between 20 to $40,000 a year to raise their child in the nation’s most expensive city. And this is an initiative that we are working on not just for the short term, for the medium term, but the long term to make it easier to raise that family here in New York City,” he said.

Hochul, meanwhile, downplayed the report, pledging an “independent verification” would be performed to determine the actual costs required, and dismissing the “outside study” as “not how we operate.”

After acknowledging she didn’t know the total cost of Mamdani’s universal childcare proposal, Hochul gushed that she was “excited” about the growth of the 2-K program in its early days.

“This is just the beginning,” she said — even as she admitted the state was only committed to helping the city foot the bill for 2-K through 2027, when the pilot will grow to 12,000 seats at a cost of $425 million.

Asked if the city was partnering with the state on the independent cost analysis mentioned by Hochul, Mamdani again bobbed and weaved his way through a response.

“I think, as you heard from the governor, it’s only right that we do an independent analysis and ensure we commit our full capacity to assessing the cost and scaling,” he said. “I will tell you that our focus right now is on delivering this free childcare to families of 2-year-olds across our city. We’re excited that in just a short time, families will start benefiting from this. It’s going to scale up to 12,000 seats, and we’re going to continue doing the work to ensure it expands so every family can access free childcare for 2-year-olds.”

Mamdani and Hochul said each free 2-K seat, offered across five mostly lower-income and diverse neighborhoods, would save families an average of $26,000.

The city forked over $73 million for the pilot working out to a whopping $36,500 per child — roughly $13,000 more than the average cost of private childcare, city officials have acknowledged.

Among the families who received an initial offer, 99% of all offers were to a program listed on the family’s application; 82% were matched with one of their top three choices; and more than half got their first choice.