Provided are techniques for progressive optimization for implicit CAST predicates. In response to receiving a query with an original predicate comparing a character value of a character data type to a literal value of a numeric data type, a number of iterations is set to a length of the character data type. For each of the number of iterations, prefix predicates are generated based on that iteration and processed to identify a qualified index key in an index. Once the iterations are completed, the character value and the literal value are normalized. The original predicate with the normalized character value and the normalized literal value is applied starting at the qualified index key identified in a last iteration to generate a result set for the query. The result set is returned.